“That one can convince one’s opponents with printed reasons, I have not believed since the year 1764. It is not for that purpose that I have taken up my pen, but rather merely to annoy them, and to give strength and courage to those on our side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.”
G.C. Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799), courtesy of 'Deogolwulf'

Almost Philosophy

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

My title comes with an apology to the late Monsieur René Descartes who was capable of much greater thinking than I can summon up at nine o'clock on a chilly morning. Ever since Tom Stoppard's play, The Hard Problem, opened (to mixed reviews!) I have been trying to avoid the subject of consciousness because, first, it is a diabolically difficult subject and, second, there appears to be no definitive answer and, third, I'm not brainy enough to offer anything original on the subject. So, as usual in my ignorance I will lean on the brains of someone who does appear to have a grasp of the subject -Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian.

In essence, 'the hard problem' can be summed up thus: is the cosmos and everything in it made up totally of material things which, even if as yet we do not know entirely how they operate, nevertheless being material they can in theory be measured and their activities defined; or, is there another part of the cosmos which is made up of immaterial things which cannot be measured, like minds and consciousness? What do I mean by 'consciousness? Well, let me ask you a question: do you, like me, think that inside your body there is a 'real you' existing which, whilst it is dependent on your carcass to carry the 'real you' along on your lifetime's travel, is in another sense independent of it? In other words, do you feel that there is a 'real you' hiding inside your body peering out at the world through your eyes and your other senses? And, even more important, this 'real you' is a mental being not a physical being.

The materialist philosophers and scientists will not have it! In recent years huge advances have been made in understanding the intricacies of how the human brain works and the more they learn the more definite their opinion that consciousness, the notion that there is a separate, independent entity called 'mind', is false and that in the end everything will be explained by material matter. This begs the question that Mr. Berkeman poses in his article, if the materialists are right does that make all of us zombies? Well, I'm 'in here', peeking out at you, or rather, your carcass over there and whilst I definitely and absolutely know that I am not a zombie, can I be sure that you are not one?

The zombie scenario goes as follows: imagine that you have a doppelgänger. This person physically resembles you in every respect, and behaves identically to you; he or she holds conversations, eats and sleeps, looks happy or anxious precisely as you do. The sole difference is that the doppelgänger has no consciousness; this – as opposed to a groaning, blood-spattered walking corpse from a movie – is what philosophers mean by a “zombie”.

Already my brain is beginning to hurt and I blame that René Descartes:

The source of the animosity [between contemporary philosophers] dates back to the 1600s, when René Descartes identified the dilemma that would tie scholars in knots for years to come. On the one hand, Descartes realised, nothing is more obvious and undeniable than the fact that you’re conscious. In theory, everything else you think you know about the world could be an elaborate illusion cooked up to deceive you – at this point, present-day writers invariably invoke The Matrix – but your consciousness itself can’t be illusory. On the other hand, this most certain and familiar of phenomena obeys none of the usual rules of science. It doesn’t seem to be physical. It can’t be observed, except from within, by the conscious person. It can’t even really be described. The mind, Descartes concluded, must be made of some special, immaterial stuff that didn’t abide by the laws of nature; it had been bequeathed to us by God.

Well, we can set aside the 'God question' for the moment but still ask if Descartes was right? Not according to the materialists:

The withering tone of the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci sums up the thousands of words that have been written attacking the zombie notion: “Let’s relegate zombies to B-movies and try to be a little more serious about our philosophy, shall we?” Yes, it may be true that most of us, in our daily lives, think of consciousness as something over and above our physical being – as if your mind were “a chauffeur inside your own body”, to quote the spiritual author Alan Watts. But to accept this as a scientific principle would mean rewriting the laws of physics. Everything we know about the universe tells us that reality consists only of physical things: atoms and their component particles, busily colliding and combining. Above all, critics point out, if this non-physical mental stuff did exist, how could it cause physical things to happen [...]?

Well, I don't care what they say, I'm still in here, inside my head, and that's 'me', the real 'me' and, to quote the title of, ahem, a 'famous essay', "I think I am what I am therefore I must be"!

Saturday, 07 February 2015

You may need to sit down with a stiff drink before reading this but I very nearly felt a twinge of sympathy for President Obama yesterday. He is receiving a steady stream of abuse because he dared to remind the American people that the history of Christianity is soaked in blood. Of course, that is a truth but, in typical Obama style, it is a trivial truth and also a sly truth because it serves only to provide him with an excuse not to condemn Islamic bestiality. It also conveniently skips over the gradual but inexorable changes wrought in Christianity following the Reformation. Suffice to say that today's passive and pacifist Christianity bears little resemblance to the Christianity of the crusades over which Obama obsesses. He might also care to brush up on his American history in which Christianity played an important role in aiding and comforting and invigorating the equal rights movement led by Martin Luther King - and please note his middle name!

In the current context the question arises as to if and when Islam will experience its own reformation? Where is their Luther, asks Theo Hobson in this week's Spectator, "presumably sulking in the corner of some madrassa" he suggests! However, he is quick to set Luther's words and actions in a proper historic context:

Instead, Luther said something along the lines of: ‘Let’s purify our religion, be more faithful to its essential logic, contained in its founding documents.’ And this reforming movement gradually produced new political realities and ideas. Creating a more liberal political order was not on Luther’s agenda, nor on anyone’s at that time, but it did become a central concern of some Protestants in the next century. The Protestant Reformation was not a matter of Christianity accepting the truth of something else, something beyond itself. And that is what people really want when they say that Islam needs a reformation: they want it to accept the truth of western values, adapt to them.

So the ‘Islam needs its reformation’ line makes this mistake. It supposes that Christianity and Islam are two comparable forms of religion: if Religion A adapted to modernity, Religion B can too. But Religion A didn’t adapt to modernity: it inadvertently made modernity, by trying to be more purely itself.

The entire article is worth reading in full. It seems to me that the very real threat to Islam will not come from some internal equivalent of a Luther but from the inexorable pressure of modern western life-styles. This pressure is felt by every Islamic male with a wife or daughter whose envy, mostly carefully hidden for the moment, of the freedom enjoyed by western women, strikes at the very heart of the male domination that is central to the Islamic religion and central to the Muslim man's view of himself as all-powerful over his own domestic domain - even if he is a virtual slave to the political domain. In the end they will lose but they will murder as they lose and it will be a long-drawn out affair.

Alas, God has very little to do with any of this, it is people who are to blame!

Tuesday, 27 January 2015

In this modern age we are constantly bombarded with symbols to the extent that we ignore most of them or at best only register them subliminally. But there are a few, a very select few, which comply with the requirement that a truly striking symbol should be 'seen once but never forgotten'. What makes a symbol unforgettable will vary, perhaps its incredible beauty, its striking aptness or, in this example below, it's ironic horror.

Today is the 70th annniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. If the infamous gates with their despicable motto are not symbolic enough then the very name - Auschwitz - is enough drop the emotional temperature in any setting. It freezes speech and thought. The term 'there are no words' becomes almost literally true. But of course there are words and there are thoughts and it is necessary to force oneself to think and say and write them. Perhaps the first thing is to remind ourselves that Auschwitz and the entire Nazi programme was a mere ripple in the huge ocean of Man's inhumanity to man. The history of Stalin and Mao shows that Hitler was a dilettante when it came to the grim business of mass murder. But then, symbols rarely do show historical exactitude, at their best they go to a deeper truth.

The name of Auschwitz and the visual symbol of the gate should give us pause. If they do then don't fight it. Take the pause, use it, if only for a few minutes, and ponder on the hows and whys and wherefores, not of Man's inhumanity to Man, that's too abstract, but instead concentrate on how individual men and women, like some of the people in our offices, living on our streets, drinking in our pubs, can be capable of ushering men, women and children into gas chambers?

Yeah, well, you're right, you can't think about it for too long. The mind or the imagination simply slams shut in a reflexive response. Still, on today's 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, at least give it a passing thought.

Sunday, 11 January 2015

First of all let me disappoint one or two of you. We are not suddenly going to get rid of our Muslims, we are not going to have mass round-ups and incarcerate them inside, er, 'concentration' camps, and we are not going to ship them all back to 'where they belong' (assuming you could work that out given how many of them were born in this country), and finally, we are not going to liquidate them. Why? Because in this country we just don't do that sort of thing any more, although I cannot speak for some of our European neighbours. So, get used to the idea. They're here, they're staying and there's an end on't!

However, there is no doubt that the Muslim population inside the UK is host to some deadly and malignant groupuscules who must be pursued with vigor by the appointed forces of law and order. This sort of thing is not unusual here, we had exactly the same problem during the Ulster travails when the indigent Irish population provided cover for some equally mad, bad people intent on killing as many of us as possible. Did that make the entire UK-based Irish population enemies of the realm? Of course not, a tiny minority were, a fairly large but inactive swathe was generally sympathetic for the usual reasons of soppy 'Oirish' sentimentality and the remainder ignored it all because they simply wanted to get on with their lives. Thus it is, in my opinion, with our Muslim population.

And it's no good moaning and groaning about the political class and their mistakes of the past in letting all these people in - you voted for 'em! And anyway, whatever our politicians would or should have done, the immigrants would have come in by hook or by crook - because that's the way the world is today. Sometimes I imagine you 'little Englanders' gazing fondly at your old atlases, like the ones I had at primary school in the '40s, and admiring the great swathes of red that covered the globe which indicated the reach and spread of the British empire. Of course, that was 'immigration', too, when you think about it - but of the right sort, doncha' know, old boy!

Immigrants from whatever ethnicity will always have their fair share of rogues and vagabonds and will certainly arrive with cultural, political and religious baggage but the majority of them have taken a very risky leap into an unknown in the hope of making a better life for themselves. As such, they are usually diligent, hard workers who add to the wealth and well-being of their host nation. The problem starts with their off-spring born inside this country, some of whom lose the virtues of their parents and, alas, take up the very worst characteristics of their hosts - and, boy, do we have some awful characteristics as any Friday or Saturday night on a High Street will confirm! They are mostly male and young and they are imbued with what I call the 'warrior instinct', in other words, they want to go and prove themselves in battle - exactly the same motives I had when, young and daft, I volunteered for the army in 1959!

So, our security services need to cut out the cancer inside our Muslim population but whilst they need to do it with ruthless diligence they must also do it with intelligent care, just as a surgeon slicing into a cancerous area must be careful how he wields his scalpel lest he kill the patient! So far, it seems to me, our security services have done an excellent job but of course, as the old saying has it, the terrorists only have to get lucky once!

There is, however, one other crucial activity that needs to be pursued with vigor and this is one that must take place at the local rather than the national level. There are people, many of them, who are imbued with what I will call 'community spirit'. (I am not one of them, the very word 'community' makes me shudder but then I'm just a grumpy, old loner slumped in front of a computer!) At the local level, every club, every organisation, every association of any sort should make a determined effort to make contact with their local immigrant community of whatever sort. I would even be in favour of government grants to clubs and societies who can prove that they have made positive moves towards their local immigrants. I urge this not because I have suddenly become 'Mr. Sociable' (no chance!) but because it is essential that every effort is made to seperate the 'goodies' from the 'baddies', or to use the old tactical jargon, it is necessary to 'drain the swamp'.

In the meantime, we must all uphold the right of people to be rude about other people whilst at the same time urging them not to be! Good manners makes for a civil society, bad mannes produces the sort of yobbery that is commonplace today. There are two adjuncts to that, however. If your rudeness is linked in anyway to urging or provoking violence against an individual or an entity then the existing law should be used with full effect. Secondly, there must, in future, be no limits on who or what can be the subject of rudery. From pictures of Mohammed to the mob at Hillsborough who crushed 'footie' fans to death, nothing and no-one is exempt. And that includes all those 'precious' icons so dearly beloved by the Left!

Saturday, 10 January 2015

I'm almost out of sick-bags here watching and listening to the vomit-inducing humbuggery of the Left as they bleat away in support of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who, with malice aforethought, deliberately insulted other people's most sensitive religious beliefs, not once, not twice but three times. The wailing, flailing and breast-beating by the Left looks and sounds like, well, an Arab funeral.

Now let me be clear, I stand four-square behind your right to be rude about anyone or anything but, at the same time, I really do wish you would not! As I constantly remind commenters on various Left-wing blogs I grace with my presence - sorry, did you say something? - resorting to streams of insults achieves absolutely nothing positive and much that is negative. An acerbic, even fierce, argument can be conducted without resource to football ground language.

So, whilst "any man's death diminishes me' - although, now I think about it I'm not sure that's quite true, so let us just say that some diminish me a lot less than others! Thus, the death of the main progenitors of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons leaves me shrugging in indifference. They knew the risk they were running, indeed, one of the widows was quoted as saying that her husband fully expected to be killed. So, got that one right, then!

But now let us return to the Left-wing humbugs howling their support for the right to be insulting and offensive. OK, my little Lefties, try these:

Fucking niggers!

Arabs shag camels!

Ed Miliband is a retard!

"Chinky-chonks" - which just got someone into trouble!

Immigrants leech off us indigents!

'Global Warmers' have all suffered lobotomies!

Is all that OK with you 'Guardianistas'? I mean, is it insulting and offensive enough? I could do a lot better if you really want me to. Ah, I see, you didn't really mean the right to be rude to anyone, just to those you don't like - gotcha'! Perhaps in future you should stick to insulting those soppy Christians, they never retaliate, they just pray for you - suckers!

Friday, 02 January 2015

So, you Anglospheroids, feel all superior do youwhen you read about the likes of North Korea, or Vlad's Russia, or the People's Republic of China. Ghastly places, you shudder, thank God - and Magna Carta or something or other they taught us in our history lessons - at least we have freedom of speech 'over here' - and they even have a version of it 'over there'. Really? Do you believe that?

Ok, well here's a little test. Go into work next week and start moaning about all those camel-shaggers or Yids or 'Chinky-chonks' or nig-nogs and then see if your feet touch the ground as security frog-marches you out of the building and dumps you and the contents of your desk on the pavement! Thus will you find out the hard way that we very definitely do not enjoy freedom of speech in this country.

Well, of course, we never have had it if you take the word 'freedom' in its widest sense because libel and slander have been punishable in the courts for centuries. However, they are laws proposed and debated in parliament and passed by due process. Also, they are designed to protect specific individuals not entire ethnic groups which is just as well because in the 1940s the Germans might have lost the war but they could have sued our backsides off for the things we said about them!

Now don't misunderstand me - the last pathetic plea of the man caught out in saying something 'inappropriate' - I am not in favour of people slagging off other individuals or groups or races because by and large I'm in favour of good manners. And, JK, don't bother rushing to the archives to find the many instances of my rudeness to others, I am all too well aware of them. However, the great virtue of public rudeness towards individuals or groups is that it tells you so much about the person being rude! I want to know what other people really think, it says so much about them, and so the last thing to do is shut them up for fear of a whipped-up public campaign against them. And finally, it worries me that the language commissars are entirely self-appointed. No-one voted for them. They just use their big mouths to dominate the media. They are a very real threat to us all.

I should make clear that not only have I not read either book, I have absolutely no intention of ever doing so. Both have been praised for their scholorship, even if they reach different conclusions, and there can be no doubt as to their historical importance. However, call me 'Mr. Wimpy' but there are just some subjects which I simply cannot stomach.

Arendt's summation of Eichmann's industrial scale slaughter as "the banality of evil" offers a seductive description of an otherwise inexplicable life to those of us who have never 'been up front and personal' with evil on such a monstrous scale. Yes, we can comfort ourselves by saying, he was just another pen-pusher, a jumped-up clerk with no imagination and therefore incapable of sensing the ocean of blood through which he was wading.

But Ms. Stangneth will, apparently, have none of it. Not only did Eichmann know full well what he was doing, he was an enthusiastic and tireless advocate for even greater efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe once and for all. Apparently, some of her material came from recorded interviews that took place post-war in Argentina between Eichmann, who had taken refuge there, and a Dutch pro-Nazi contemporary of his called Willem Sassen.

Thursday, 11 December 2014

Tuesday night, slumped in my armchair and idly clicking around on my 'magical-do-flicker-thingie' I came across a real 'baldy-bonce' called Prof. Jim Al-Khalili. Well, I'm not surprised he's bald because his brain cells must be leaping about beneath his skull at a ferocious rate. This man is a serious swot!

I immediately took to him because of who he was not! That is, he was notProf. Brian Cox, 141/2, the BBC's usual swot of choice. I resent the fact that Prof. Cox looks so young but more, much more, I am infuriated when the juvenile geeks who design his programmes fill the screen with noisy, pointless cgi effects. By and large Prof. Al-Khalili avoids that sort of thing and instead uses wit, eloquence and intelligence to inform us of the profound mysteries of quantum mechanics.

My admiration for him and his programme was sealed when he actually made mention of a book I read some 35-years ago which had an enormous effect on me. It's fair to say that The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav had a profound effect on my internal life, or, if you prefer the current jargon - 'it blew my mind away'! Scientifically, it's almost certainly out of date by now but I treasure my dog-eared edition. And I should add, of course, that both then and now I had considerable difficulty in following the science but - heh! - even Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, the two greatest 'brain-boxes' of the 20th century had major problems, too. They both disagreed fundamentally with each other's theories on the quantum world.

Part of what fascinates me is not so much the description of the quantum world, or the various theories proposed to make sense of what is apparently a bizarre or even lunatic description of what passes for 'reality' at that level, but the border between our world of tangible objects behaving rationally and measurably, and the quantum world where things both are and are not! Remembering, of course, that all the things in our world are made up of the things from 'loony-land'.

The programme was on last Tuesday evening on BBC4 so if you have one of those i-pod, i-pad, i-pud, or whatever they are, you may be able to watch it now. The second and final programme is on Tuesday next week. Not to be missed! Julia Raeside in 'The Graun'has written a very good review of the first programme.

Sunday, 30 November 2014

I am nudged into this post by my e-pal, Michael, who in a comment to the post below vehemently disagrees with my suggestion that, in effect, politicians are us. I can understand his 'Shlock-Horror' given that so many politicians are more or less total A1 shits of the first order. Surely, we all say as we shudder, we're not like them. Sorry and all that but oh yes we are!

It's another version of 'Dubya's famous "vision thang" but using the word 'vision' in the strict sense of seeing. The fact is that we 'see' politicians on an almost daily basis and because we have political opinions we find ourselves disagreeing with at least half of them and dismissing them as fools and poltroons. Also, because we live in democracies our pols are watched fairly closely and in the end any bad behaviour usually floats to the surface like a 'you-know-what'!

Now, just suppose for a moment that the people who live in your neighbourhood - including you and yours! - were placed under the same glare of public scrutiny on a 24-hour, 365-day basis. Oh my, what secret naughtinesses would be displayed. And in some cases, the, er, 'naughtinesses' would be nauseating! Of course, in a sense it doesn't matter because by and large our neighbours do not have power over us which is why, on the whole, we leave them alone with their secrets and they leave us alone with ours.

Unfortunately, and despite our fervent wishes that it wasn't so, we need politicians. That has been the way of the world since Man began to congregate. The ability to be a great politician is an exceedingly rare gift, so most of them are second-raters - or worse! They undertake it for a variety of reasons which cover the gamut of human strengths and weaknesses. Most, more or less, fail! Some get lucky - I think of Churchill who was by general opinion up to WWII dismissed as a totally untrustworthy, romantic buffoon.

Now, my e-pal, Michael, seems to say that we can do without politicians. Not so, Michael, alas, someone has to stand up on the platform with the levers of state power before them and take public responsibility for the outcomes. Without them there would be chaos - or dictatorship. The most that 'We, the People' can hope for is a chance at regular intervals to turf the rascals out. Nor should the hideous difficulties of coping with those immense responsibilities be ignored. Matters of war and peace, of economic probity, of social justice and so on are not easy and rarely clear cut. They require judgment, cunning, intelligence and experience. Would you really trust those sorts of decisions to the bloke who lives next door? Perhaps more to the point, would he want to go within a mile of them?! He might sound off in his local bar or, dare I say, on his blog!, but actually taking on those sorts of responsibilities would concentrate his mind wonderfully!

No, I'm sorry to say that we really do need the rascals but of course we should take every opportunity to hurl rotten veg at them and, when we see them on a platform, pace the late, great Auberon Waugh, insist that they show us their willies!

Thursday, 13 November 2014

I knew I shouldn't have stuck my toe in all that heavy stuff about space, life, evolution and really, really big sums but there, I've done it, so now I will jump in head first! The Really Big Fundamental Question remains what it has always been, how did matter/energy come into existence? The swots seem fairly agreed (for the time being!) that it all began with a Big Bang but that, of course, does not answer the fundamental question. Even I can grasp that if you suddenly let loose mega-gazillions of hydrogen particles at high speed in all directions then, assuming (yes, another assumption) that the laws of physics are just sitting around waiting for something to operate on, then some of those hydrogen particles will collide, or attract each other, so that larger particles are formed and then suddenly, hey-ho, we're off to the races. It is worth noting that if this explosion of particles had been absolutely exact and precise the little critters would just have flown off into the big beyond but, of course, it was the tiny little deviations in the explosion which assisted the gradual union of particles. So, in a sense, we are the result of a series of tiny errors. What lies beyond the Big Bang, of course, is silence! Not even the great scientific swots have more than fanciful theories which are no more convincing than those offered by the theists. You pays your money and you takes your choice!

All of that takes us to the Really Big But Second Question which asks how organic life developed from collections of inanimate matter? The swots seem convinced that water was a cardinal requirement which is why there is so much fuss over exactly how and when water came into existence on earth. Those who believe that life began on earth seem to have settled on a theory that the very best conditions were deep in the pre-historic oceans w here various chemical particles and elements under huge pressure and immense heat from fissures in the seabed somehow created replicating organisms from hitherto lifeless matter. But now we return to the current question plaguing the swots - did this process just occur on earth where at a certain moment in time the conditions were just right, or was it that the water from space detritus that crashed into earth wasalready bearing the 'seeds' of replicating cells? The point is, as I understand it, that the parameters for an environment conducive to creating life from non-life are unbelievably strict and limiting and that even the very slightest deviation would result in no result!

All this leads onto the Really Big Third Question which is that if all that frozen water was hurtling about the universe crashing into this, that or the zillion other planets then surely there must be a chance that life exists elsewhere. Alas, to the deep regret of the swots who believe that theory, so far there has been absolutely no, nil, zilch indications of any life anywhere within reach of our observations. It's not so much that we are waiting for the second shoe to fall, we haven't actually heard the first one yet. Alas, well, alas for me, I must now return to sums again! The absolutely essential requirements for life to develop on earth are, as I said before, terrifically strict - even the minutest deviation would abort the attempt. So looked at from an earthly perspective the chances of life beginning here are infinitesimally tiny. But looked at from a cosmological platform with zillions of planets all in different stages of development and with all that water whizzing around, so to speak, to 'fertilise' them then you would have to say that it would probably happen sooner or later - somewhere. And perhaps in several different places even though there are no signs (signals) of it to us. It is necessary to think of the mathematical chances of success when the opportunities for it run to eye-wateringly huge numbers given the size of the universe. It is around this point that my synapses tend to close down rapidly!

And that word 'synapses' brings me - er, are you still with me? - to the Really Big Fourth Question. Actually, I should refer to it properly as The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Thoughts can be explained scientifically as a series of inter-actions between objects 'out there' which are picked up via our sensory perceptions, sight, sound, etc, and are then converted by electrical impulses into our brains where we experience thoughts and images. As Isaac Newton put it:

to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.

It's that old mind/body problem again. When and how - and why - do merely mechanical processes somehow convert into ideas? Perhaps that very intelligent chappie, Tom Stoppard, will tell us in his new play due to open any moment now at the Royal National Theatre. The play is called The Hard Problem!

(I suspect there will be a number of typoes in this for which I apologise and will make every effort to correct as soon as possible.)

Sunday, 19 October 2014

Those 'damn Yankees' are at it again: I keep telling them but they never listen - all we want are your food parcels and you can keep your hurricanes to yourself. But no, on Monday night and Tuesday morning our 'septic Isle' is to be pounded from the west by another hurricane which, if it knew it's place, would be ripping through Arkansas and blowing the jugs of hooch off Barney Magroo's shelves. But it may not be all bad because according to reports it will mainly hit Ireland and 'ooop north' as far as 'Jockland', and it's an ill wind that doesn't blow up a Scotsman kilt and give us all a laugh!

Why UKIP will ultimately fail: Because deep down, that is, just beneath the skin which counts as profound in 'Kipper' circles, they couldn't agree on the time of day! It is already obvious that Farage and Carswell do not live on the same planet. Carswell's views on immigration would horrify most 'Kippers'. Now we read that Mark Reckless, 'their man in Rochester', is refusing to back 'Kipper' policy in regard to the HS2 farrago. I think the only thing they can all agree on is their detestation of 'Dim Dave'. Beyond that, they're a shambles!

'Lookin' good over there': Shouldn't speak too soon, I know, but me and my big mouth, or perhaps I mean, me and my big keyboard, can never resist the temptation. However, I am relying on Mr. Larry J. Sabato of the University of Virginia who is, by all accounts, a terrific pollster swot and on Thursday he summed up the electoral situation 'over there' as they run in for their midterm election. His opening paragraph, with his emphasis, says it all:

As we approach the home stretch, 2014 has turned into a tale of two elections. On the one hand, this is a classic sixth-year itch election where the incumbent president’s party is going to suffer losses in both houses of Congress. We’re just arguing about exactly how many. Overall, it is indisputable that Republicans will have more critical victories to celebrate than Democrats when all the ballots are counted, and they have a strong and increasing chance to control the next Senate.

I do hope he's right and if he is, then only a jug of Barney Magroo's Very Finest 12-Hour Vintage, slightly chilled, and served in a tin cup, will do for the celebration.

And here's another reason why I might have enjoyed university: From time to time I have expressed my irritation, I could use a stronger word but given that I don't know the man it would be inappropriate, at 'Archbishop' Richard Dawkins but anything from uneducated 'me' by way of criticism would be like shooting at a Tiger tank with a pea-shooter. So on this occasion I am delighted, courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily again, to whistle up a proper, heavy weight, intellectual tank-buster - John Gray, the philosopher. In his long but elegant dismemberment of 'Bish' Dawkins, John Gray displays that finesse with an intellectual and literary scalpel that I truly envy:

One might wager a decent sum of money that it has never occurred to Dawkins that to many people he appears as a comic figure. His default mode is one of rational indignation—a stance of withering patrician disdain for the untutored mind of a kind one might expect in a schoolmaster in a minor public school sometime in the 1930s. He seems to have no suspicion that any of those he despises could find his stilted pose of indignant rationality merely laughable.

Yet another 5-star corker: Yes, yes, I know I 'm a tad generous with my 'star' allocations but this one really does earn every one of them! It is "Eyeshot" by Taylor Adams, and no, me neither! However, Mr. Adams understands that in a thriller a simple setting and story line can be absolutely terrific - as in terrifying! In this yarn, a young couple are driving across an almost totally empty desert, somewhere in New Mexico, I think. They are diverted by emergency signs off the main road and along a small country road which eventually leads them across a sort of moonscape bowl about two miles across. Waiting for them, well camouflaged, is a psycho, long-distance sniper! The rest is a nail-biter! By the way, I bought it for my Kindle for £1.99! They ought to make a film of it but as much of what goes on is inward thinking that might be a bit tricky to pull off. The chap who made Gravity could probably do it. Anyway, buy it and money back if you don't like it, er, not from me, waddya think, I'm made a' money?!

'Nige' gets some help from - Barroso? So the soon to retire consigliori of the racket that is called the European Union spends all day on our TV sets telling 'Dave' what he can and cannot do. How much of his various interviews will re-appear on 'Kipper' electoral ads, do you think?

Thursday, 09 October 2014

I don't understand all this 'social media' lark like Facebook, Twitter, Texting and such like. As far as I am concerned it all began - and ended - with blogging. The world of 'Blogdom' sums up the entire human condition - it is mostly a heap of shit but here and there can be glimpsed a gleam of gold! As you can guess, you are about to be told of my latest 'gold find'. It comes via one of my very oldest favourites, Samizdata, which has been bookmarked by me from my earliest blogging days although recently, for no known reason, I have failed to visit as often as I was wont to do - my bad! Anyway, my fault was nearly my loss because I almost missed a link to another interesting site called Not PC: promoting capitalist acts between consenting adults which had the sort of blogpost I love, one in which my lazy, gut-based re-action to events is forced to reconsider.

Written under a pseudonym it is concerend with the recent pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. To be honest, I didn't give that much of my attention to it except generally to wish the students well and hope they had the intelligence not to push the authorities too far. As it happens, both sides behaved themselves and the result has been, er, zilch, nought and nothing - but at least no-one died. However, 'Suzuki Samurai', the pseudonymous post-writer has forced me not so much to rethink but to actually start to think!

He begins by reminding us of, er, the 'rules of the great game':

Wasn't it easy a few years back to see who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? Our team were the free(r) societies. Their team, the dictatorships. Or another way of saying: capitalists vs communists. The Hong Kong/PRC & West/East German borders were the front lines in an ideological battle (which at close range must have seemed like an imminent fighting battle).

We in the West proclaimed that what set us apart were free speech, free movement, free(ish) markets,rule of law and democratic elections; and while not the whole truth it’s still mostly true.

I have emphasised the "mostly" because this very acute writer points out that Hong Kong doesn't really quite fit - again with my emphasis added:

I say mostly in this context because rich, prosperous, flourishing Hong Hong had all those attributes except the last: democratic elections.

Yep, it turns out no elections were necessary in a society based on the sound principles of low taxes, low regulation, free movement, and rule of law – it made them rich extraordinarily quickly. Who'd want to vote that away? Well quite a few folk if elections around the world are any indication.

That, since the discreet, 'behind the damask' rule of the late and very great, Sir James Cowperthwaite, has been the guiding ethos behind Hong Kong's extraordinary growth and prosperity. The last thing Hong Kong needs now is rule by a bunch of local, busybody semi-socialists. Beijing recognises a good thing when they see it and they will sit quietly and allow HK to flourish provided no-one rocks the political boat.

To put a dystopian slant on it (no pun intended), if you were a Hong Konger then ask yourself which would you prefer if these not impossible choices confronted you:

A Beijing mandated official is 'elected' and keeps the freest economy in the world as it is,

A freely, democratically elected socialist comes to power and starts to turn Hong Kong into a regulated, highly taxed, welfare state?

Yeeeeees, quite, see what I mean, it makes you think, don't it? Just gotta lurve Blogdom, aintcha?

Sunday, 14 September 2014

Will 'MacChavez' win? I dunno! Nor does anyone else. The polls are all over the place. I fear that the decision either way may be very small which will be the worst of all possible outcomes because it means the interminable arguing will go on and on. Alex Salmond is the epitome of the big-mouth agitator spouting emotional nonsense which he knows will appeal to the lowest common denominator. Politically, of course, he is a national socialist (please note lower case lettering) and those sort of people have history. One of the more recent was the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who led his people up the garden path and out into a desert. Venezuela has bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and after several years of rule by Chavez and his successor, the country is now importing oil! Wake up, Scotland, before it's too late!

Wisconsin on my mind: Yes, I might be up to my ears in cooking, housekeeping, shopping and nursing (feeling sorry for me, are you?) but I still try and keep half an eye on the Wisconsin election. Even from this distance I have some considerable admiration for Republican Gov. Scott Walker who is a 'doer' not just a 'talker'. Having won the Governorship against the odds he immediately took on the giant public service unions and their Democrat puppets and despite them using every trick in the book - he won! One of his prime aims was to enforce voter registration and I am delighted to say that a suitably high-level court has endorsed the procedure. Not, of course, that I am suggesting that Democrats would pay people, including the dead, to vote several times over - perish the thought! Thanks to IHTM.

The Deltoid Tabernacle Choir warms up: Well, as I told the little Deltoids during my last visit, they really do need to wrap up warm if they intend to take part in the march on New York to raise awareness of global, er, warming:

According to reports temperatures have reach record lows across the north of America and several States have experienced heavy snowfalls. The 'Deltoid Tabernacle Choir', an Aussie group whose rendition of 'I Belieeeeeeeeeeeeeve' is a hit the length and breadth of, er, downtown Goondiwindi in Queensland, need to take precautions against the freezing weather.

A pair of interesting loons #1: There appears to be a plethora of loons around at the moment but I have chosen just two of them for comment. By "interesting loons" I mean that they are mostly bonkers but in the highest traditions of English eccentricity. The first is Peter Tatchell. According to The Coffee House, he has just been awarded some totally useless academic bauble in honour of his fight/agitation (you choose) on behalf of LGBTI (or is it ITBGL, or perhaps TIBLG? Oh, hell, I dunno!) Anyway, in a spirit of generous pig ignorance he has 'donated' his bauble to the Palestinian Authority. As Rod Liddle points out:

Let’s just briefly compare the treatment of LGBTI people in those two territories, then – Free Democratic Palestine and the Vile Fascist Entity.

The Palestinian National Authority awards the death penalty for homosexuals. In Israel homosexuality has been legal de facto since 1963 and de jure since 1988.

Palestine does not allow same-sex adoptions or the recognition of same-sex relationships. Israel allows for both.

See what I mean about loons!

My second interesting loon: I give you - Mr. Joey Barton, 'footie' player, thug, convict - and philosopher! It is all too easy to write off Mr. Barton as an irredeemably thick, Scouse git whose mouth out-measures his brain by several factors of ten. His record - innumerable yellow and red cards from referees, to say nothing of his jail-time for assault and the almost non-stop use of his mouth to no good purpose - is there for all to see and shake their heads at ... and yet ... and yet. Henry Winter, an exceptionally good sports writer at The Telegraph, digs a little deeper and uncovers two interesting facets to Mr. Barton's personna - an ability to look at himself honestly (not many of us can do that!), plus, intellectual curiosity:

“I got in to a few scrapes. I was living this Peter Pan existence of never ever growing up. Emotionally I was stunted. Is football an industry that allows people to develop emotionally? I’d say not. That’s the nature of the beast. You’re one bad injury from the end. You are one bad season from a dramatic change to your earning capacity. In football you’re always building towards a cliff, and then you go over it. I know there’s a void at the end of my career. We are all insecure. I just mask it better than other people."

[...]

He has enrolled on a philosophy course at Roehampton University. “The other students at Roehampton get annoyed with me at times because I can draw out an hour lecture into two hours asking questions. I have an inquisitive brain. It’s the one thing I’ve been blessed with. In lectures I don’t think about how I can improve QPR [Queens Park Rangers]. I just think about the ultimate, about what we are here for.

[...]

“I carry a bag of books around with me at all times. I’m reading Machiavelli’s The Prince. All the stuff in class at the moment is about dualism, materialism and Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus. In the physio-room we have a lot of debates. I come in and say: ‘This is the question posed today: Is death bad for the person who dies?’ The lads will chip in. As a young footballer I made the stupid mistake of dumbing down. Footballers aren’t dumb.

For what it's worth, I wish you well, Mr. Barton, you sound like the sort of man it would be worth having dinner with - and there aren't too many of them!

Over here and over there it's the same old same old:Janet Daley in today's Telegraph sums up exactly the malignancy which afflicts both Britain and America. I will not attempt to summarise it because it really should be read in full. However, I will add that I think one of the important factors behind the increased disillusion with our respective political classes is the fact that in these modern days we know so much more about them and the ways in which they manipulate the political process. Just a generation or two back, all we knew about our political class was what was printed in the somewhat staid newspapers of the day. Today politicians can barely pass wind without us receiving a whiff! Thus, knowledge, or at least, partial knowledge grows - and with it, cynicism. Not necessarily a good thing!

Saturday, 13 September 2014

Yes, I know, my title is hardly an original thought - you don't get a lot of that here! - but as I intimated in my previous post, there is a genuine difficulty in differentiating between the particular and the general. My example from yesterday based on so-called 'national characteristics' was, I think, a very good one. There is excellent evidence to support the idea and I can provide one very good example - the Prussian way of war. The geography of the north German plain is best summed up in the memorable phrase - 'it's as flat as a witch's tit'! From the earliest of times that meant the German tribes who existed there were under constant threat from their neighbours because there were simply no natural defences like large rivers or mountains. Consequently, those early tribesmen learned that the best form of defence was attack. This became deeply engrained in the national psyche and was re-enforced over the ages by the unchanging geography of the place, such that, at the beginning of the 19th century Gen. von Scharnhorst spelled it out in exact words:

Prussia should never conduct a defensive war, her geographical position and her lack of natural and artificial means of defence do not allow that option.

A century later, Gen von Schlieffen, operating under the same zeitgeist, worked out his (in)famous plan in which he intended to attack the French and destroy their entire army in six weeks despite the fact that it was becoming increasingly clear that modern weapons made fighting a defensive war much easier than an aggressive one. But all of that is, so to speak, looking down on matters from a great historical height. Go down to ground level and pay a visit to Germany and you tend to find polite, friendly and civil people who would hesitate to say 'boo' to a goose. Apparently, even their demonstrators obey traffic regulations!

And all this disparity between the general and the particular takes me to another 'German' (well, actually, he was Austrian but what the hell!), Ludwig Boltzmann. He was the major swot who realised that in order to understand the nature of gases it was impossible to follow the trajectories and behaviours of each and every molecule or atom. Instead, you had to average them out in order to draw certain conclusions. Thus the question is left hanging, what, exactly and precisely, is the true nature of a gas, its individual atoms or the average of their behaviours?

It is around about this time in my occasional ponderings on the matter that my head begins to hurt and I require some 'Scottish medicine' - and, oh my God, what will that cost in the future if the Jocks walk? Now that's what I call a real problem! Mind you, thanks to 'JK' there's always the product of Barney Magroo's still to fall back on - and I do mean 'fall'!

Friday, 12 September 2014

I am provoked to this post by an article in The Spectator by Sean Thomas on the subject of national characteristics and since, judging by his name, he sounds half Irish and half Welsh he may be very well qualified! It is, I confess, a subject that has been rattling around in the back of my skull for some considerable time because I am guiltily aware that as a blogger commenting on world-wide affairs I am prone to laziness and self-indulgence by tossing around short-hand characteristics which I attach to various nationalities.

I really am ashamed when I catch myself at it because if ever there was a proof that so-called 'national characteristics' should be treaed with great caution it is this blog. I have had many different nationalites commenting here and it is a truth frequently repeated - well, frequently repeated by me! - that writing anything, no matter how apparently neutral and innocent, immediately begins to tell your reader something about yourself. All the personalities I have met via this blog have their fair share of discernible characteristics and it is all too easy to mutter something like 'typical bloody Yank', or 'what else would you expect from an Aussie' or 'oh no, not another grouchy Jock' or whatever. It is only when you pause for a moment to consider that you remember that exactly the same sentiments could have been tapped out on a keyboard belonging to any number English friends and aquaintances.

And yet ... and yet ... the idea of national characteristics is deeply entrenched - the rude French, the exciteable Italian, the loud American, the militaristic German and, of course, the quiet, modest, brave and generous Englishman - ooops, sorry, that's out of date now. Perhaps it was true once back in the 1950s when most Englishmen had been through a war about which most of them did not wish to talk and who were only too grateful for a quiet life. But today! Well, as far as I can tell, your 'average' (yes, yes, I know!) Englishman is a gobby, ignorant yob with the sort of social skills that would work best amongst a pack of orang-utans!

So, you tell me, is there really such a thing as a national characteristic?

Monday, 25 August 2014

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures [my emphasis], what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

Yes, you are right, a swot, but a truly great swot and a man I have admired enormously since I first came across him in the early '80s - Richard Feynman. It was just before that time that my insatiable curiosity was hooked by the 'fantastical' - well, they were 'fantastical' to just about everyone including the swots! - notions of quantum mechanics. Thank God, there were, and still are, excellent writers who are able take the ignorant by the hand and lead them gently at least part of the way into the magical mystery land that exists below the level of the atom. I stress that one can only go so far unless, that is, you can 'speak' mathematics. Without maths you can only grasp the outline but that is enough to blow your mind away in such a fashion that you will never look at the world in the same way again.

I can't recall the details of the programme I watched but in essence it was Feynman explaining these wonders in a totally relaxed, not to say downright easy-going manner in which all the hideous complexities (well, some of them) were clarified. Later I bought and read James Gleick's biography of him, Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics. This showed the mischievous, gambling, womanising, drum-playing Feynman as well as the brilliant scientist and the loving husband who was widowed far too early in his life.

Anyway, the point of all this waffle is to tell you that friends and colleagues of Feynman have brought together all of his lectures given at Caltech University back in the '60s and published them on the internet. I have saved them and I will, I promise, try and nibble at them bit by bit although whether or not I live long enough to finish them is moot! And how much I will understand is even 'mooter'!

Thursday, 21 August 2014

I quote the memorable words of that less than memorable lady, Hillary Clinton, because they (sort of) seem appropriate to the current 'shock-horror story' (and I absolutely do not intend any irony in that phrase) concerning the execution in Syria of James Foley by, apparently, a London-based Islamic fighter called 'John'. Before going any further let me pay tribute to Mr. Foley who was, judging by his calm demeanour in the photograph taken prior to his execution, an exceedingly brave man. I would pray for an ounce of his courage were I ever to face imminent death.

Once again I find myself shaking my head in sorrow at yet another example of man's inhumanity to man which is, of course, as old as Mankind. Certain commentators will heap curses on the head of the executioner and his fellow jihadists and, to be fair, if I had the chance I would shoot 'John' out of hand . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . what, exactly and precisely, is the difference between 'John' and, say, 'Lt. Wotsisname' of the USAF sitting in a bunker in Texas guiding a drone missile into a car in a street in Iraq on the assumption that it contains some 'baddies' but irrespective if the collateral damage on the street takes out a few women and children?

Well, one difference is obvious. 'John' has to possess, God help him, an unthinking and all-possessing hatred to help him overcome even the minimal human feelings he possesses because chopping someone's head off is about as up close and personal as you can get in the 'killing game'. On the other hand, all that 'Lt. Wotsisname' has to do is press a button and then supress his imagination. The point I am meandering towards is this: given that it is war, is there any real moral difference between the two acts?

(I have to go out this morning so I will leave the question with you. Hopefully I will have enough spare time to think on it myself and see if I can grope my way to a conclusion. See you later!)

The answer to the question I left you this morning is 'no' but somehow we all tend to think that it should be 'yes'. Alas, the result is the same in both cases - dead bodies. There is an all-too-human tendency to feel that because ours is a 'righteous' cause taken up by democratic governments that makes our killing more excusable than theirs. But of course, they believe the exactly the same thing, that they are acting in God's name in an equally 'righteous' cause and that we are the agents of the devil. It's worth noting that in both cases the operational imperative is the same - terrorism! Both sides wish to terrorise their opponents, we by obliterating them suddenly without warning from a blue sky, they by cutting our heads off publicly. The use of terror has a 'distinguished' pedigree. Karl von Clausewitz suggested that wars should be fought with maximum ferocity in order bring a war to an end as rapidly as possible. The collateral damage might be enormous but if the war ends after one year rather than dragging on for a decade then that is to be preferred.

Of course, it is often said that it takes two to make war but that is not quite true. It might be if one side is so weak and feeble that it merely surrenders but usually an opponent will make it clear that he intends to defend and thus it is up to the challenger to fire the first shot. There-after, there is only one aim - to win - and yes, to win at all costs. It is that brutal fact that makes war the hell it is.

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

That is the sort of sentiment that poets go in for and we all nod sagely and agree - until we actually think about it. The human ego, or perhaps, the human will to live, is enormous and we survice even the death of loved ones. The death of strangers, frankly, barely touches us. Well, it certainly doesn't touch me, let alone diminish me, when it is the death by suicide of yet another talented, mega-rich, Hollywood star with a wife and family and therefore much to live for. I do not suggest that psychotic depression does not exist and that its malignant features do not inflict grievous wounds on human personality. However, what I do think when I hear that the likes of Robin Williams, after a lifetime, apparently, of booze and drug abuse has topped himself, is of those people I know personally who suffer similarly but who have the guts and determination to fight back, to keep going, to stay the course, if not for their own sake then for the sake of the people who love them.

Friday, 11 July 2014

'Pathetic' barely describes the pathos of yesterday's public (non) service unions attempt to mount a strike. Poor - well, not exactly poor, really - old Arthur Scargill must have cried in his beer as he saw the miserable turn-out. "Eee bah goom", he probably muttered to himself, "It we'ren't like that back in't good old bad days!" Indeed not, and thank God for it, or to be precise, thank 'that woman!' for it. The days of millions, not a few thousand, bringing the railways to a halt, blocking the docks, shutting the mines, closing government offices and schools are long gone. Fraser Nelson has an excellent analysis in The Telegraph. However, what has suddenly dawned on me is that ever since 'that woman!' ran the country there has been a gradual but inexorable change of opinion amongst ordinary people. Up until her arrival the automatic response from the public was that government knows best and the state will take care of everything. Now they are beginning to realise that in very many instances the opposite is true. As Nelson points out in one telling detail:

Most state secondaries have now applied for self-governing “academy” status, reaching out for the freedoms the Coalition offered. Good teachers, it seems, quite like the idea of performance-related pay. The free schools that the NUT so vigorously opposes are so popular with parents that there are three applications for every place, and they have proved more likely to be rated “outstanding” than council schools. Reform, it seems, is working.

The Lefties all chanted "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" when Maggie Thatcher died but she's having the last ghostly laugh as her spirit rolls on and on.

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

No, no, not you, Dom, my regular commenter here at D&N; I mean Dominic Cummings, the maverick SpAd who departed from government at the weekend but only after tossing a grenade into the lobby as he left! I wrote about him two posts below. He follows in the footsteps of Steve Hilton, a previous SpAd to 'Dim Dave' himself who departed for the USA last year but who managed to restrain himself from pissing on the No. 10 carpet before he left. His reasons were more or less the same as Cummings's - a total lack of grip from the centre, constant Lib-Dem interference, a recalcitrant civil service and a complete lack of resolve at the highest levels to achieve radical reform. Hilton has obviously cooled off somewhat because he has recently returned to No. 10 on a very part-time basis. I wonder if he and Cummings will meet for a quiet lunch?

Before I go further, I would add a comment or two on Cummings's historical complaints concerning the general uselessness of British governments going back to the 19th century - see my previous post. It may well be true, as Bismarck complained, that Palmerston and his ilk were less than knowledgeable concerning the then miniscule state of Prussia but the reason might have been that they had a global empire to run. Also, it is not fair to accuse the British governments of 1900 - 1914 of blundering about in an ignorant morass. Lord Grey was foreign secretary for nine years up to 1914 and he had a very clear idea of what was coming and why and what we would have to do about it. Similarly, we were blessed with Lord Fisher at the Admiralty who drove through much needed reforms in our principal defence force which allowed us to deal with the very greatest threat during the war.

Perhaps they were the exceptions that proved rule. However, today Cummings's description of the current state of our political leadershipconfirms exactly the general sense I have of lacklustre leadership dribbling down from men who have absolutely no clear sense of direction and who will seize any opportunity to jump on a passing bandwagon so long as it is bright and shiny and new - HS2, anyone? The problem is, asAlex Massie spells out in his essay at The Coffee House, David Cameron is a Tory not a radical. True Tories do not believe in ideology which is why so many of them hated that arch-ideologue, Margaret Thatcher. And it is why today so many conservative ideologues despise David Cameron.

Here, from Alex Massies's essay, is Cummings's depiction of what passes for our government today:

Westminster will swoon at the criticisms of Cameron (‘a sphinx without a riddle’), Ed Llewellyn (‘a classic third-rate suck-up-kick-down sycophant presiding over a shambolic court’) and Craig Oliver (‘just clueless’) but that’s just the gags, really. The substance is elsewhere. As in:

“MPs have no real knowledge of how to function other than via gimmick and briefings. That’s also how No 10 works. It’s how all of them are incentivised to operate. You get ahead by avoiding cock-ups and coming up with tactical wins, you don’t get ahead by solving very hard problems.”

As for civil servants:

“The poor buggers are caught between structural dysfunction and politicians running around who don’t really know what they’re doing all day or what the purpose of their being in power is. Everyone thinks there’s some moment, like in a James Bond movie, where you open the door and that’s where the really good people are, but there is no door.”

Any of that ring a bell with you? To me, it sounds louder and clearer than a peal of bells from my church next door!

Sunday, 15 June 2014

Why are the most brilliant insights often so simple and obvious? According to The Telegraph, it was way back in 1974, when Gerald Ford was president of the USA, that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and one or two others met for lunch in a Washington restaurant. Among the group was a little-known professor of economics, Arthur Laffer, who insisted that the president's desire to raise taxes was mistaken. He used one of the restaurant napkins to draw a simple diagram demonstrating that beyond a certain point higher taxes collect less money. "At a stroke", to quote the old phrase, of his pen, Laffer exposed the Lefties' desire for yet higher taxes to be what we had all suspected it to be, that is, punitive rather than a pious desire to raise as much money as possible to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Laffer is in London to attend the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty next Wednesday. Give that man a knighthood! (Apparently the napkin still exists!)

A culinary triumph:I BBQ-ed last night and I can honestly label it a 'triumph' not least because of certain factors lodged against its success. First of all, it was my first BBQin what seems like decades ever since global drowning took over from global warming! Second, and even more important, I had mixed myself a jug 0f nitroglycerine dry martini without which my cooking skills deteriorate, or to be honest, without which I worry and fret about whether or not I am cooking correctly (with it, I don't give a flying fig!) but the 'Memsahib' in an act of gross carelessness verging on sabotage lifted the jug from the deep freeze - and dropped it! (The divorce should be over by Christmas, an open and shut case in which I know his Lordship will sympathise with me.) The third factor promising myriad potential disasters was that the 'Memsahib' insisted that I cook the food on kebab sticks, a style of cooking which I have never attempted before. And I had to do all this whilst sipping on white wine, or what jovial Jack Falstaff called, "thin potations"! Terrifying because, of course, I am not used to BBQ-ing whilst stone-cold sober! Fortunately, because I regularly 'labourin the vineyards of the Lord' (= cut the grass in the churchyard!) He smiled upon my efforts and the result was a sensational success! This morning I am moving slowly and finding the noise of this clicking keyboard a little loud! And, oh God, I've just remembered that we're out to lunch today . . .

That Magna Carta ain't worth the vellum it's written on! Well, not when it's used as an example of what constitutes being 'British', according to Dr. Tim Stanley in The Telegraph as he gives 'Dim Dave' the equivalent of a hundred lines for failing miserably to define 'Britishness'. Dr. Stanley, obviously a highly erudite and intelligent man - well, he agrees with me! - insists that we should just concentrate on teaching our 'likkle kiddie winkies' the history of their country:

You really want to turn our children into little Britons? Then just teach history honestly and well. Let them enjoy it, wallow in it, find their heroes, identify the villains (Henry VIII) and make their own minds up about what it means to them. Teach them literature, too, and philosophy/religious studies so that they understand the moral foundations of the society around them. Most importantly of all, teach the Forsterian principle of connection. When did we last feel really British? At the massive get-together that was the Diamond Jubilee. And did we all sing along to lines of Latin from Magna Carta, or to Suggs and the boys from Madness? Even those dour old Whigs can’t deny the power of ska…

Monday, 09 June 2014

My previous post reminded me of something, to be precise the question in my title, that has been rattling around in the back of my mind like a pebble in my shoe and which, irritatingly, will not go away. Don't feel sorry for me because, of course, it is my own laziness that has stopped me from seeking an answer. Anyway and apropos my previous post, there must be a reason, or probably several, why Islam has barely changed over the centuries in the way that Christianity has. Together, both religions entered what is generally called the 'Dark Ages' but on the backs of a handful of truly great thinkers both began to enter the very early Renaissance. For example, for centuries Islam ruled in much of Spain and their societies were open and tolerant. Islamic thinkers added to the general knowledge of science and mathematics, and their craftsmen created works of art in architecture and design as you can see from these photos of parts of the 14th century Alcazar Palace in Seville, a place not to be missed if you are nearby on your summer holidays.

So when and where and why did it all go wrong? I do understand, and even sympathise to a degree, why they are so frenetic in their desperate resistance to the inexorable advance of social, political and religious mores that are hateful to them but still the question remains, when and where and why did they get stuck in stasis?

Friday, 18 April 2014

I have had one or two Easter cards from friends as well as some verbal wishes for me to enjoy a happy Easter. Happy! Waddya mean - happy?! Of course, I realise that in this post-religious, or to be more precise, this post-Christian, era the story of Easter has been more or less forgotten, indeed, I had to think twice myself before writing this post. However, if what passes for my memory serves, then allow me to remind you that it tells the story of some poor Yiddisher kid who grew up thinking he was the Son of God and who went around preaching to the effect that we should all love one another and live our lives by a set of ethical rules which, you have to admit, may be a tad tricky to keep up but which are, by and large, emminently sensible. In return, you would earn a place in heaven when you die. Now that last bit was, and still is, the bit everyone forgets. There is a tendency for some people to try and live up to His standards and who then become mightilly pissed off when all they get for their efforts is ten tons of misery and trouble. But that's the point, see, you don't get your reward until you die! And indeed, His own life was the prime example - he went round preaching all these good things and claiming to be the Son of God and what did He get for his trouble - an excruciatingly cruel death inflicted on Him by malignant people whom He was trying to save!

Now, I don't pretend to know what happens to us after death. I am quite satisfied that whatever else does or does not happen, my carbon molecules will go back into the great mix and the "wheel of fire" will continue to turn. Nor, I must insist, do I conduct my life on the basis of what may or may not happen after my death. I don't quite know how or why but, given the odd few mistakes here and there, I have tried to live my life very roughly in line with the Christian ethic, not because I live in hopes of salvation but simply because it seems an emminently sensible way to conduct one's life. But is it?

I have been contemplating disasters recently. The main one that springs to mind, because I have just finished a book on it, is the battle of Kursk in 1943. I will not bore you with the details, suffice to say that the sheer, monstrous, unbelievable scale of the mass butchery that ensued simply leaves you dead from the neck up as the sympathetic synapses shut down one after the other. Millions of men, 'the good, the bad and the ugly', perished during that summer. The vast majority of them, I guess, were, in varying degrees, followers of the Jewish carpenter and His teachings. And it could be said, with accuracy, that not only did they follow His teachings but they followed His example - by dying cruely, and dying early, and dying miserably!

So, for me, the story of Easter is of just another futile death brought about by Man's inherent malignancy. If the whole of history is too much to take on then just read or watch a performance of King Lear. There, in a single play, you will have the whole human condition set before you. In it, the 'gods' are either appealed to for mercy, or praised for their wisdom and bounty, or blamed for the disasters that inevitably flow from Man's stupidity and cupidity. And yet . . . and yet . . . still we struggle on. With a tenacity and, I suppose, a hope that is almost Lear-like, we shake our puny fists at the heavens and struggle on.

Friday, 21 February 2014

Look, I'm not a professional writer - well, who the hell would pay me? Probably only Mr. Magoo and he walked in front of a bus years ago! Anyway, like my acting I am definitely an 'am' not a'pro' which is a nuisance really because this week's 'Speccie' is terrific not least because, unintentionally, I am sure, it has a sort of thread running through it and it needs a better writer than me to piece it together for you. I suppose the answer is for you to go to The Spectator site and buy a year's on-line subscription, they're going cheap.

However, if you are a tight-wad then you are stuck with my meandering summary. It begins with a truly thought-provoking article by Owen Matthews in which he describes "Putin's masterplan". Of course, we all know that 'Vlad the Impaler' is a patriotic nationalist whose politics are somewhere to the Right of Genghis Khan, but I for one had underestimated his driving ambition to lead a re-actionary world movement against the forces of western liberalism. I knew from the anti-homosexual laws he has passed that he was virulently opposed to the 'Open Societies' of the west. What I did not know was that Russian diplomacy is now very focused on building a global alliance of governments who share his re-actionary stance.

If your response is to shrug and mutter 'so what?' let me tell you that one of his aims, supported by his allies, is to wrest control of the internet from the hands of the American-based ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This non-profit organisation has effective control of the internet and Putin is determined that it should be broken up and more control should pass to individual states. If you wonder just how much support he is likely to attract for that idea then just pause and check out the majority of governments represented at the United Nations, the finest collection of thugs, crooks and murderers the world has ever seen. Together they make the Chicago mob look like a scout troop! If national governments take control of the internet it will instantly cease to be a world wide web.

The other interesting thing that Mr. Matthews tells us is that what I might call Putin's 'High Church/High Tory' view of a politically and socially correct society is attracting recruits in strange places. He points to Pat Buchanan, a leader of the Moral Majority movement 'over there'. Buchanan moved in presidential circles (well, not today, of course!) and is the co-owner of The American Conservative magazine and he is full of praise for what he calls Putin's 'paleo-conservative movement'. And Putin's pull is spreading, according to Mr. Matthews who tells us that the Illinois-based World Congress of Families has accepted an invitation to hold its eighth world congress in Moscow. Its leader, Mr. Larry Jacobs, is quoted as saying "Russia could be a great ally for conservatives, on issues like defending the family, abortions, even strenghtening marriage and promoting more children."

'The times they are a-changin'', me thinks. Whilst I can look back in history and see and understand nations going to war over, say, the 'Schleswig-Holstein problem' which is, if not concrete, at least soil and cities, I can't help wondering whether we shall find ourselves at war over our approach to abortion law, marriage and divorce arrangements, feminism and homosexuality? As always there is a snigger or three to be had in this controversy, not least the fact that 'Vlad, the born-again Puritan Christian' managed to 'ditch the bitch' and shag the young dancer although whether or not he married her remains lost in a Russian mist! (That sentence would not make it through an internet controlled by Vlad!)

Needless to say, the first casualty in all of this is poor, old, gang-banged Christianity with all parties from the low liberals to the 'High Tories' claiming Christ and his teachings as their social/spiritual guide. That takes me to a book review in the Speccie by Douglas Murray. The book is calledInventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop, a distinguished professor of political philosophy. Mr. Murray is usually something of a hard-hitter but it's fair to describe his analysis of this book as 'a rave review'! The second paragraph of his review instantly gripped the remaining few of my Book Tokens (from SoD at Christmas, appropriately enough!):

At the very opening of 'Inventing the Individual' Larry Siedentop lays this problem out. People who live in the nations once described as Christendom 'seem to have lost their moral bearings', he writes:

We no longer have a persuasive story to tell oursleves about our origins and development. There is little narrative sweep in our view of things. For better or worse, things have just happened to us.

And the final paragraph of his review clinches the now indisputable fact that my suitcase is going to be well over the weight limit when I fly to Rhodes in May!

At the very end Siedentop asks, 'If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?' Indeed. All that need be said is that there can be few better ways to understand that depth of tradition, or feel appropriate gratitude for it than to read this magisterial, timeless yet timely work.

Finally, I was delighted to see an article by Julie Burchill smouldering on page 20. I have been an ardent fan of this lady for years but recently she has fallen from favour in certain high falutin', journalistic circles and I have missed her. If I tell you that she makes the late, great Auberon Waugh, who had acid running through his veins, sound like your local vicar that will give you some idea of her vinegar nature! As you may vaguely remember, she fell foul of what she calls the 'non-working class Left' when she leaped to the defence of her impeccably Left-wing friend, Suzanne Moore, who had rather carelessly referred in an article to the fact that so many women were angry with themselves "for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape - that of a Brazilian transexual". Cue: ten tons of politically correct 'poo' being poured over Ms. Moore's head but, of course, immediately enter stage Left (natch!) her friend and champion, Julie Burchill:

Repelled by the filthy threats which were flying fierce and fast at my friend, I began to talk trash on my Facebook page - though even my trash-talk, it must be said, has a vicious elegance that most people's A-game lacks [Hear Hear!] I opined that a bunch of gender-benders trying to tell my mate how to write was akin to the Black and White Minstrels advising Usain Bolt on how to run. I stated that it was outrageous that a woman of style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chick's clothing and their snivelling suck-ups. The usual cool, calm and collected sort of consideration I'm famous for.

Oh, truly may it be said that 'age shall not weary her, nor the years condemn' - thank God! And what a friend to have in a time of need. Read it all in this week's 'Speccie'.

Tuesday, 11 February 2014

When I wrote the previous post I still had Mr. Ledwidge's final chapter to read but I was so incensed that I couldn't wait. Even so, despite the red mist which had descended upon me, there was, I thought, one weakness in his passionate and intelligent argument in favour of getting our army to embrace entirely new ways of 'fighting' (probably not a word he would choose) a war amongst a civil population. If our entire army was retrained to undertake these types of operations there would be a very real danger that they would forget the techniques required to fight normal battles against regular opposition armies. No sooner did this occur to me than Mr. Ledgwidge, in his final chapter, raised it himself as a serious possibility:

There is a danger that this approach will be misunderstood - there may well come atime when we need the conventional capabilities that the armed forces possess in such depth. Over concentration on 'wars among the people' might easily result in these 'high end' skills atrophying or in entirely new skills not being developed.

He offers no solution to this potential problem, so I will! Let us have no more 'wars amongst the people'. If we have a truly serious gripe against a foreign government, and by 'serious' I mean that they intend to do us, not anyone else, not even their own people, just us, immeasurable harm, then we should deploy our forces, along with any allies, and use the very latest and sophisticated techniques of modern 'blitzkrieg' warfare to attack, not the people, but their government. Use cyber, drone and missile systems and even, if they represent a big enough danger, put boots on the ground and rout out and destroy the ministers, the civil servants, the generals and any others of prime importance plus their military infrastructure, and having done so - leave by the first available exit!

With all due deference to Mr. Ledwidge, it is not our duty as subjects of 'Her Maj' to send our servicemen and women out to foreign countries to 'do good'. For example, with all due respects to a very fine battalion, 3 Para couldn't 'do good' if you replaced all their officers with padres! But show them a military enemy and they will be very 'bad' indeed - as far as the enemy is concerned, that is. Orwell's words are frequently mis-quoted but this I think sums them up:

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

I am neither an original nor an analytical thinker - waddya mean you knew already?! However, I do try to keep up with the broad sweep of affairs and as a result, obviously, I begin to come to tentative conclusions. Occasionally, because frequently I am wrong, these are confirmed and as I am by nature something of a gloomy cynic I can tell you that it is not comfortable having one's own worst fears confirmed. And all of that brings me to the sorry state of the British army. I should make clear instantly that none of my remarks are aimed at what I would call 'the Tom level', that is, the rifle sections, platoons, their NCOs and their junior officers. They, as always, put up with the 'muck 'n' bullets' and just get on with the job to the best of their courageous and determined abilities. It is as one goes higher, and yet higher still, in the chain of command that it becomes clear that today the British army is just another self-perpetuating quango, not too dissimilar to the Environment Agency who, as we now realise, deserve to be drowned en masse in the floods to which their stupidity has contributed so much. But back to the army. As my occasional grumps over recent years in the direction of the top Brass have indicated, I have sensed a distinct lack of strategic and operational clarity and purpose from them, to say nothing of a total loss of moral authority. I have now almost finished Frank Ledwidge's excellent book, Losing Small Wars: British Miliatry Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is quite clear that for the last few decades the Army has become a prime example of institutionalised stupidity!

It is impossible for me to summarise Ledwidge's entire book, I can only urge you to read it - and weep! I was about to write that perhaps the worst thing in it was his description of the hideous embarrassment occasioned by particularly stupid general officers talking down their noses (and out of their arses!) to the Americans because they reckoned the British army was the best in the world for dealing with insurrection warfare based on their experience of old campaigns like Malaya and Northern Island, and the Americans would simply roll their eyes and warn each other that if they ever had to listen to another know-it-all Brit they would not be responsible for their actions! But that, of course, was not the worst thing about either the unmitigated disaster of our pathetic failure to control Basra, or our even more utterly useless campaign in Helmand. No, the worst thing was all those bloody coffins coming down the ramps at Brize Norton and all those medical facilites filled with young men trying to come to terms with life without limbs.

All that, thank God, is about to come to an end and now it is time to think of the future. It is clear beyond the slightest doubt that the British army is unfit for purpose, not because of its troops but entirely because of its generals, its command structure, its lack of intellectual curiosity and its complete inability to think outside the box. (Incidentally, I refer to the army but I suspect that exactly the same strictures can be applied to the other two services.) Thus, it is necessary to take stock of our national position and plan our armed services accordingly. Oddly enough, financial reality has forced the 'Frocks' to begin taking the right decisions. We are no longer a global power. Happily, our neighbouring continent is more or less at peace with itself and it is obvious that we have no need to bankrupt ourselves trying to project our pitiful power round the world. Thus, all we need today, and for the foreseeable future, is a small but highly trained defence force along the lines of the Israeli Defence Force, that is, one based on a small regular army and a much larger reserve force. The recent cuts in the army and the efforts to recruit part-time reservists should be encouraged far beyond the recent modest attempts. At the same time, and using part of the money saved, their should be a tremendous increase in what I call 'e-warfare' equipment and operators. By that I mean everything from guided missiles to cyber systems for attack and defence. The aim should be to make this Island of ours exceedingly 'prickly'! The time has arrived in which it is feasable to halt an enemy in its tracks simply by crashing all his computer systems! As a first step on the way to creating a new 21st century British Defence Force, the government should start by sacking 4 out of every 5 officers in all three services over the rank of colonel. Then they should make clear that from now on they have no intention of putting British boots on foreign soil. Any bleats from the Foreign Office about how it might detract from our relationship with the Americans should, after sacking 1 in 3 of them, be ignored. The Americans, from Obama down, think we're rubbish anyway - and, bitterly I must admit, I don't blame them!

This is the second decade of a new century and we need to have a clear strategic aim and in my view that aim should be to invigorate our commerce by every means possible. When, and only when, we are a truly wealthy, and wealth-producing, country will our power and influence be noted by others. Until that happens my advice to our less than glorious leaders is - Think Small!

Wednesday, 05 February 2014

Yes, sorry about going AWOL yesterday, "Events, dear boy, events". Also, to be honest, for once I really didn't have much to say - so treasure the pause, it doesn't happen very often! This morning I am bringing you two 'pre-book reviews'. I use that phrase because they are books which I have started and which have already impressed me - or perhaps 'depressed me' is a better description! The first is Losing Small Wars by Frank Ledwidge and its sub-title British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan says it all. I have only just finished Chaper One and already I am deeply depressed. Chapter Two begins with two quotes which give you the flavour:

I don't know how you could see the British withdrawal from Basra in 2007 in other light than as a defeat.

Col. Peter Mansoor, BBC, Secret Iraq, Oct 2010

Roderick Lynne: To what extent was this happening under the aegis of an overall strategic plan?

General Salmon: We were working to a set of objectives. There was no overall strategic plan.

Evidence of Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon to the Iraq War Enquiry, 2010

And we haven't even started on Afghanistan! This first book, I suspect, is going to concern itself mainly with what is called the 'operational'. This is the area of military activity which lies between tactics, the way in which individual troops set about their tasks on the battlefield, and strategy which concerns itself (or should!) with where and why one's armed forces are committed in the first place. Thus, the operational covers the decisions of the force commander and his staff as to how and where and why his troops should operate 'in country'. From other sources it has been clear for some time that the British army failed miserably in the 'operational' in both Iraq and Afghanistan and I hope these books will provide some reasons for it.

The second book is of a very different order and can only be classified as military philosophy in the style of Karl von Clausewitz. War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics written by Emile Simpson, a former Gurkha officer with several tours in Afghanistan to help convince you that he knows where-of he writes. I must also add that it resembles Clausewitz's famous book, On War, in that its prose is not of the easiest but even so, despite having only reached page 27, I suspect it is worth persevering with not least judged by the calibre of the 'rave reviews' it has engendered including this from Sir Michael Howard, no less:

Emile Simpson's War from the Ground Up is a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military; from the most recently enlisted cadet to the Chief of the Defence Staff ...

I fear these two books between them are going to confirm my worst suspicions concerning the intellectual feebleness of our senior commanders and when I consider the dead and the maimed my blood boils.

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

We all have 'egos', as the Freudians insist on calling our sense of self and the will to live. Alas, for some it so very small and fragile that suicide is their only escape. Happily, my ego is well above average in size which is more than I can say about other, er, 'accoutrements' of mine! Even so, as I bimble along in this life of mine there are moments when I am humbled, so to speak. For example, and I suspect this is very common with many people, on those occasions where I find myself out of doors on a cloudless night it is impossible not to stare at the stars and, as I remind myself that the swots insist that all we can see is but a microbe in the unseen grand totality of the universe, I am faintly irritated to be reminded that I am merely a speck!

A similar, but, shall we say, more fundamental example of our individual titchiness in the great scheme of things was supplied by Dr. David Grimes, courtesy of a link supplied by my e-pal, DM. The good doctor (and I really do think he is a very good doctor!) informed us all that:

We have seen in a previous post that we are only 10% human, that micro-organisms on us and in us outnumber human cells by a factor of 10 to 1.

Dammit, I have already been told by 'Archbishop' Dawkins that my only reason for existence is to act as a carrier for tiny blobs of chemical jelly which tells me constantly what to do - and no, I am not referring to the 'Memsahib'! But the good Doctor goes further and attacks one more very slight but, er, fundamental, reason for my ego to swell. (Sorry, the 'fundament' word-play will become clear as I go on but I should warn those of a delicate nature to proceed no further!) There is something enormously satisfying when one excretes a truly colossal poo! I remember a mate of mine in the army who produced a whopper of Olympic proportions and insisted that the whole platoon view it which we did with cries of congratulations and what are you going to call it?!

So on those rare occasions when I do better than average in that department it does provide a tiny addition to my ego, and thus, I was crushed, I tell you, crushed, when the good Doctor informed me that my poos are notmy poos!

Most of the almost hundred trillion micro-organisms that inhabit our bodies live in the intestine. Not only are they by far the most numerous, also the most diverse and the least understood, but they seem to be of the greatest importance. Remember that about 95% of ourfaeces is composed of dead bacteria, with very little food waste. [My emphasis.]

What?! You mean I'm just some sort of walking, talking, mobile 'khazi' for a zillion bugaboos? I mean, is that it? Is that what my existence amounts to? Too, too humiliating! Well, I want a word with the manager of this outfit . . .

Sunday, 26 January 2014

"London: a nation not a city":Thus, wrote Disraeli and if he was right then he is even more right today. I stepped out of the Embankment tube station yesterday and walked over the Thames on the pedestrian bridge. The sun was shining and the view was simply superb. On the north bank were the neo-classical traditional London buildings and on the south were the first, not entirely successful, efforts at 'modernism' undertaken post WWII. In the middle distance was St. Paul's in all its pristine glory but behind was the fantastic (in all senses of the word) skyline of the new 21st century City of London. As I strolled along the South Bank on my way to meet 'SoD' I wondered again who in the past had been responsible for safeguarding that promenade and thus holding off the rapacious demands of the post-war developers who would have built right up to the water's edge. The tide being out, not the least of the delights is the sight of dozens of people people, including children, down on the muddy ground between the river wall and the river's edge scrounging for any interesting finds. If any of you find yourselves in London with time to kill, just stroll along the South Bank from the 'Eye' to the Globe and back again.

'Tate Modern' tits!Unfortunately, part way along you will have to pass the Tate Modern gallery which, if the IRA had lacked a target 'back in the day', I would have urged them to do their best-worst on it. It is a hideous building which looks more like an armoury than an art gallery. Most of the art in it is total tripe but, as in all things, there are the occasional exceptions of which the Paul Klee exhibition was a prime example of beauty inside a beast! Needless to say, we entered the fortress and whilst there were plenty of big posters advertising the Paul Klee exhibition there were absolutely none telling us where it was situated. A security guard pointed the way to the lifts and stairs leading to the first floor where, he assured us, we would find it. Arriving at that level, again we looked in vain for any sign to tell us where they were hiding his works and again we had to ask for directions. Do the people who run the Tate Modern have their heads so far up their arses that they never give a thought to the visitors? Needless to say, a huge collection box asking for £4 a head by way of charitable contribution to the gallery was prominently displayed - and determinedly ignored by me - tits!

Yet more 'tittery':The choice of paintings and the layout was superb because they ran from his early pre-WWI efforts as a young man through the inter-war period up to his death in 1940. Thus, you could see the way he experimented with different forms, how he analysed the individual elements that go into a painting - line, shape, colour, composition, texture and so on - until in his later years he brought them altogether in forms that delight and excite the senses. Looking at the very best of Klee's works is like looking at the universe, or looking at the world of sub-atomic particles. Each of the small linked galleries had works from different periods of his life and very large wall-mounted information boards giving background detail of his life at that time. Needless to say, the 'Tate tits' placed these by the entrance/exit between galleries so that the passage was filled with people trying to read the information and other people trying to get in! Anyway, yesterday was my Christmas present from 'SoD' and it was terrific!

"Many a man is the Macbeth of his own little world, and the measurement of evil is not the same as a body count."

"Those who think that an understanding of the double helix is the same as an understanding of ourselves are not only prey to an illusion but are stunting themselves as human beings, condemning themselves not to an advance in self-understanding but to a positive retrogression."

"... four centuries before neurochemistry was even thought of, and before any of the touted advances in neurosciences that allegedly gave us a new and better understanding of ourselves, Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge. There is no technical fix for the problems of humanity. Those problems, he knew, are ineradicably rooted in our nature; and he atomized that nature with a characteristic genius never since equalled: which is why every time we moderns consult his works, we come away with a deeper insight into the heart of our own mystery."

Not 'Black Monday' but 'Interesting Monday':And in international financial affairs, 'interesting' is a more ominous adjective than 'black'! So-called 'emerging markets' like Argentina, Turkey, Brazil and India have seen their currencies take big hits and that caused the 'Noo Yawk' stock exchange to drop 310 points by Friday's close of business. The London market dropped 1.6% to its lowest for five weeks. This is the FTSE 100 which these days indicates global sentiment rather than the domestic British situation.

Yes, not a pretty sight, I agree! But that is Ed Balls in the process of undoing your braces without you feeling a thing, until your trousers hit the floor and you stand their like a chump because instead of paying attention you were entranced by his honeyed words. Happily, Fraser Nelson exposes the deception by pointing out that raising the rate of tax to top earners produces less income not more. Thus, Balls' claim to reduce the deficit will take longer! Not, mind you, that he intends to reduce the deficit because when he talks of 'balancing the budget' he just means the regular, annual ins-and-outs of government spending. However, that does not include - dread word! - investment! Oh dear me, no; Ed Balls will continue to borrow like a loonie to build his own favourite icons and call them 'investments for the future' - yadayadayada!

'The Sound of Mucus' causes Dave to blackout!Well, that's how I read the headline in The Mail although what it actually said was:

Engineers sent to David Cameron's house after he suffered blackout while watching The Sound of Music -

Serves him right, I thought, anyone who volunteers to watch that load of nauseating old kitsch deserves everything they get. And, I wondered, what in the name of hell was our prime minister doing watching it, hasn't he got better, or at least more important, things to look at? But then I read the rest of the headline:

- as workmen battled to restore power to 11,000 homes in county

Oh, I see, you mean that sort of "blackout". I thought his eyes had rolled to the back of head and his little plump cheeks had puffed up as he fell off the sofa and 'Sam Cam', after refusing to give him the kiss of life and who could blame her?, had called on his protection officer to do his duty! But no, it was just that the lights went out and 'Dim Dave' had an excuse for his dimness!

Another 'must read' triple corker:If you enjoy history and if you enjoy Shakespeare then Neil MacGregor's book Shakespeare's Restless World: An Unexpected History in Twenty Objects is a 'must read'!As the title implies, he takes 20 fairly ordinary objects from around Shakespeare's time and sets them in the social, political and religious milieu existing then. I am only one third of the way through but already it has dawned on me just how important it was that theatres arose in which men and women, lords and commoners, could all share an experience and imbibe a world-view - literally when you think that Drake's circumnavigation took place in 1577-1580 and the implications were quickly picked up by the playwrights of the time, especially Shakespeare. Treat yourselves to the book and learn much effortlessly from Mr. MacGregors elegant writing style.

Friday, 17 January 2014

Of course, regular old lags at this site will know of my propensity for wholesale larceny whenever I spot anything worthwhile on another site which I do frequently because, dammit, so many people think and write better than me. Here I have a brilliant blog post from the proprieter of The Cafe Hayek which I will not attempt to paraphrase. However, to appreciate it in full it is necessary for you to read, in the post immediately below, my synopsis of a previous post at The Cafe Hayek by Mr. Russ Roberts in which, with delightful malice aforethought, he deflates that great windbag Paul Krugman by quoting, er, Paul Krugman. Having read that, then read this by Donald Boudreaux:

Suppose that famous scholar Jones had acknowledged in a best-selling textbook or in a highly regarded academic article the rather obvious point that an increase in the frequency of successful thievery reduces economic growth. Increased thievery reduces economic growth in three ways. First, property rights will be less secure, thus dampening productive people’s willingness to build machines, to accumulate inventories, and, generally, to create moveable property; second, as relatively more people choose to work as predators, relatively fewer choose to work as producers; third, more resources are used simply to protect existing property from being stolen rather than used to produce and improve productive capital.

Suppose that later, on a popular website whose audience is known generally to applaud armed robbery and other modes of theft (they think theft to be a splendid means of promoting ‘social justice’), Jones explains that it is a silly and ideologically driven tic to dismiss the possibility that increased thievery will promote economic growth. If thieves have a higher marginal propensity to consume than do their victims, then the increased spending by the thieves – whose incomes rise because they are now stealing more every year – might well stimulate the economy onto a path of higher growth. Also contributing to greater economic growth are victims’ higher expenditures on the likes of padlocks, alarm systems, and armed guards.

While it’s imaginable that the economy will respond to increased thievery in the happy way that Jones describes in his popular essay, no person of sense would take Jones seriously. No one would say, “You know, Jones has a point. Let’s not be so narrow-minded in our pursuit of economic truth. Let’s be scientific and consider all possibilities. Jones outlined a general-equilibrium theory that explains the benefits of increased thievery. Therefore, because Jones is a famous scholar, his case for thievery must be taken seriously and not dismissed simply because elsewhere he points out the partial-equilibrium downsides of theft. Jones is looking at the whole picture. Perhaps more thievery would indeed be wonderful for the economy.”

Yet when taking more of Sally’s property and transferring it to Steve is done by government and labeled “tax” and “unemployment benefits,” Jones’s general-equilibrium analysis suddenly becomes respectable. Those who object to it are accused of being benighted by ideology and of suffering from an unscientific inability to appreciate Jones’s brilliance in pointing out the nuances of general-equilibrium versus partial-equilibrium theorizing.

One can still make a case on humanitarian grounds (or on grounds imagined to be humanitarian) for forcibly transferring resources from employed Sally to unemployed Steve. But to then attempt to explain that this policy might actually increase Steve’s likelihood of finding and taking a job is an unreasonable – a scientifically unreasonable – stretch. Yes, the Keynesian effect is imaginable (human imagination is expansive, and the range of the possible is vast), but how likely in reality is the ‘general-equilibrium’ effect to dominate over the ‘partial-equilibirum’ effects? In the case of an increase in outright thievery such as pickpocketing, burglary, and armed robbery, arguing for a serious consideration of the reality of the ‘general-equilibrium’ effect of a stronger economy would be seen for the tiresome pedantry that it is. In the case of government-orchestrated unemployment ‘insurance,’ though, such pedantry suddenly, and mysteriously, becomes the mark of a serious scientist.

So, those who believe that this positive economic effect of higher unemployment benefits is sufficiently likely in reality to warrant serious consideration (and to justify Krugman’s sneering dismissal of those who think otherwise) are also scientifically compelled to list thievery as a potential economic stimulant. Note that I do not say that they are obliged to champion thievery. A variety of other considerations might still lead them to reject thievery as a sound economic policy. When discussing the scientific merits of a policy of encouraging people to pursue careers as pickpockets, embezzlers, burglars, muggers, and armed robbers, however, the general-equilibrium effects of such a policy must be recognized as possibly promoting stronger economic growth. Or so Keynesians must reason.

Simply too, too, delicious!

NOTE: In my title I placed inverted commas round 'Keynesians' because whilst I am no expert on the man I gain the impression that he changed his mind considerably as he grew older. So being a 'Keynesian' covers a multitude of sins as well as virtues!

Even the very notion of a government mandated minimum wage is nonsense but for a Chancellor to decide to raise it at a time when the economy is in dire straights defies belief. It is, of course, a direct and immediate tax on employers who are the foundation of economic activity. Apart from anything else, those extra costs will, like a game of 'pass the parcel', be passed on in one way or another. Either the business owners will raise their prices or they will cut back on staff. Well done, George!

Of course, even George Osborne understands that so one wonders - but only for about milisecond - why he suggests it? The reason is you - that's you, as in you, you,YOU! It's because he thinks that you all think that raising the minimum wage for 'the really poor' is nice and warm and cuddly and that any politician who does it will be loved and admired and thus garner votes. Also, of course, he knows that the 'Milipede' and his busted, flushed shadow-Chancellor are going to start their tedious chorus that all Tories are 'Lord Gradgrinds' - if only! Lest you doubt the spurious inanity, to say nothing of the economic illiteracy of this idea let me remind you that it was first urged by Vince Cable - yeeeeeeeees, quite!

On a similar subject, I have been amused by the antics of that ace windbag, Paul Krugman, economist of choice to Lefty 'diptoids' at the NYT. He has been urging that unemployment benefits must be extended for the long-term unemployed. Well, it's a point of view and he's entitled to it but, as Russ Roberts writes at The Cafe Hayek, it is his sneering attitude to other distinguished economists who believe that raising unemployment benefits actually makes unemployment preferable to working that is unworthy. These people, according to the Great Krugman, are simply laughable, and indeed, in his piece he actually does just that by finishing his paragraphs with "Hahahahahaha".

Well, Mr. Roberts manages not to giggle when he provides these quotes from none other than the Great Krugman, himself:

People respond to incentives. If unemployment becomes more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, some unemployed workers may no longer try to find a job, or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit. Ways to get around this problem are to provide unemployment benefits only for a limited time or to require recipients to prove they are actively looking for a new job. [Essentials of Economics (2010)]

Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment. [His textbook Economics (2009)]

Thursday, 09 January 2014

Yes, I'm afraid this is yet another example of this blog-owner rambling on about a subject of which I know very little. Thus, you will be aware that much of what I am about to write is based on supposition rather than academic learning. In this instance, I am back to my wonderment at the speed with which Christianity spread and was accepted. Of course, I have to beware of my modernistic superiority in assuming that in an age of no railways, cars or aircraft, travel was nigh on impossible. Well, no doubt it was for most people but for a select few, plus the ever-present entrepreneurs who plied their trading on horse, donkey or camel round the edges of the Mediterranean, or those prepared to venture by ship across the sea, travel was commonplace. Paul the Apostle, of course, stands as the perfect example of the international traveller of his day and what he may have lacked in luggage he made up for by carrying that most dangerous of all baggage - The Message!

So the word went around, surprisingly quickly, and perhaps its success was due, in part, to the nature of what I might call loosely, the Mediterranean world, or to be precise, the main cities which were tiny compared to their modern counterparts. Rome (inside the city walls), for example, was only about five square miles in area. Thus, a speaker with a message to impart could very quickly broadcast it with just a few speeches in a public place and then have it re-enforced by word of mouth. On top of that, scribes could fairly quickly copy original scrolls which could be passed around in the higher levels of society.

So getting 'The Word' out was not too difficult but why did people, if not flock to it instantly, nevertheless, take it up in considerable numbers with such enthusiasm? I can only offer one explanation (without an appeal to the supernatural, of course!) and that was what I might call 'market testing'. I have virtually no detailed knowledge of the 'gods' of ancient Rome and Athens but from the little I do know they strike me as very obviously anthropological. These randy, naughty 'gods' are simply human beings writ large! Yes, you might sacrifice a sheep, or even a virgin (if you can find one in Rome!) in order to ensure that your wife bears you a son, or that next year's harvest comes in without problem, but somehow such gods do not inspire - what's the word? - reverence, perhaps.

But even an ill-taught, semi-Christian like me recognises that the message from Jesus Christ was of a very different order of things from that demanded by the pagan gods. First of all, this was a religion that puts you - yes, you! - the individual you! - at the very heart of its sacrament. Never mind the tribal elders, the princes, the kings, the emperors or even the bloke next door, this is just between you and God whose message has been brought to you via His son on earth. That individuality, that direct connection between ordinary Man and Woman and a God must have been very powerful to ancient peoples. Second, of course, is what I might call, in marketing terms - The Big Promise! Yes, said the message, life is hell, real hell in ancient times particularly if you were poor but if you followed the teachings of Christ and lived your life according to his fairly simple to understand precepts then life would probably remain a hell but when you died you would earn your place in heaven. I guess most ordinary people knew they didn't stand much chance of ever improving their lot on earth - unless they could summon up the courage to mount a rebellion, kill the emperor and take over themselves - but here was a way of reaching a second life of limitless possibility.

Perhaps I am being overly cynical. As I indicated two posts down, ancient Rome gradually fell into corruption and licence much of which was based on a huge slave population. Most Roman citizens went along with it, much as we are doing today, but human nature is never entirely one thing or another and there must have been a growing feeling of revulsion at this decline and fall of civic behaviour. Perhaps, as one of my commenters mentioned, much of it sprang from the matrons and wives who abhorred the rampant sexuality that their husbands indulged. I don't know but the speed with which the Christian message was devoured must have reasons.

It is, of course, an irony of epic historical proportions that this earlier, leaner, simpler message, perhaps only two or three generations after Christ himself spoke His words, was quickly entangled in dispute over interpretation and as the Church organisations formed and struggled for supremacy amongst themselves, the essence of the message was lost - along with countless zillion lives - during the struggles for power in the following two millennia.

"What a piece of work is Man". That, of course, is Shakespeare but in this instance I prefer the modern American interpretation!

Wednesday, 08 January 2014

That reversal of a famous Python question puts me in mind of a suitably Pythonesque answer - we stopped them being very naughty boys! Well, that's the theory put forward in a book by Kyle Harper called From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. It is reviewed, excellently, at nybooks.com by Peter Brown. He points out the error of thinking that there is a straight, clear road of historical understanding from today back to classical Rome and Athens. Not so, he warns us, just as you travel back in time and begin to reach the outskirts, so to speak, of classical Rome you suddenly find a vertical gorge across the road of understanding. We think we know all there is to know about the Romans (and the Athenians, come to that) but in reality there are some huge gaps in our knowledge, not least in the area of what I might call 'sex and the city'!

Antiquity is always stranger than we think. Nowhere does it prove to be more strange than where we once assumed that it was most familiar to us. We always knew that the Romans had a lot of sex. Indeed, in the opinion of our elders, they probably had a lot more than was quite good for them. We also always knew that the early Christians had an acute sense of sin. We tend to think that they had a lot more sense of sin than they should have had. Otherwise they were very like ourselves. Until recently, studies of sex in Rome and of Christianity in the Roman world were wrapped in a cocoon of false familiarity.

Mr. Harper's book, based on his considerable expertise as a classical historian, spells out just how riotously sexy the Romans were until, that is, those pesky Christians turned up and spoiled the party by introducing the notion of sin. He also emphasises that this licentiousness was based, in the main, on slavery. Rome was awash with slaves whose bodies, willingly or unwillingly, were available to higher Roman society and when they were worn out and discarded they became available to the lower rungs of society as prostitutes, both male and female. But what is extraordinary to me, and I have mentioned this before, is how quickly, in just a few generations, that Christian message of removing the joy of sex and instead controlling it strictly for the purposes of reproduction took over the ancient world and locked it into place for nearly 2,000 years.

However, as Ferdinand Mount pointed out in his superb book Full Circle: How The Classical World Came Back To Us (which I recommended to you back in September 2012 - you did read it, didn't you?!) it is obvious that today the Christian message is faltering, in my opinion, under the combined attack of state socialism usurping our ideas of personal charity to the 'sick, lame and halt', and the re-emergence under governments who would sell their mothers for votes of the idea that sex should be both a free-for-all, and, more or less free for all! Thus, Mount's message is that we have gone full circle back to classical mores. Is that, in the words of Sellers & Yeatman, "A Good Thing" or "A Bad Thing"? Dunno, come back in 500 years and I'll tell you!

Tuesday, 07 January 2014

"Everyone realizes how praiseworthy it is for a prince to honour his word and to be straightforward rather than crafty in his dealings; none the less contemporary experience shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles.

You should understand, therefore, that there are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. The first way is natural to men, and the second to beasts. But as the first way often proves inadequate one must needs have recourse to the second. So a prince must understand how to make nice use of the beast and the man. The ancient writers taught princes about this by allegory, when they described how Achilles and many other princes of the ancient world were sent to be brought up by Chiron, the centaur, so that he might train them his way. All the allegory means, in making the teacher half-beast and half-man, is that a prince must know how to act according to the nature of both, and that he cannot survive otherwise."

Extracted from The Penguin Book of Lies, an excellent dip-in book for a rainy day, and when you can't think of a single sensible thing to write on your blog! The original, of course, is from that naughty Niccolò Machiavelli who never told anything but the plain, unvarnished truth and leaves you gasping, and laughing, at his shocking honesty!

Friday, 03 January 2014

I owe an apology and restitution to Prof. Deirdre McCloskey, the distinguished economic philosopher and writer. To be honest, I can't quite remember what I did wrong but I suspect it stemmed from my misunderstanding that she is a he, or the other way round, whatever, I put my foot in it and after apologising profusely I promised to buy one of her books - which I have not done! - but I will, I will, I promise! Mind you she describes herself thus, according to Wiki, so my confusion is slightly understandable:

McCloskey has described herself as a "literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive Episcopalian, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not 'conservative'! I'm a Christian libertarian."

Yeeees, quite! Anyway, the few odds and sods I have seen of her writing, almost all of them over at Cafe Hayek, indicate to me that she is possessed of a keen intelligence - another reason to buy one of her books, I suppose! - and as I am in a larcenous mood I shall nick this quote from her featured on the afore-mentioned Cafe Hayek:

If “science” means “indubitable,” then there is no science in science. If it means “very persuasive,” then much clear and honest thinking is scientific.

Damn! but that is absolutely spot on and I wish I could write with that clarity and concision. From her 1985 study, The Rhetoric of Economics.

At the same time, the 'proprietor' of the esteemed Cafe Hayek dashed off this letter to the New York Daily News:

In other words, while Mr. de Blasio thinks it “inhumane” for entrepreneurs to harness horses with bridles and yokes so that customers can enjoy paid rides, he thinks it noble for politicians to harness some human beings with the yoke of taxes and the bridle of regulation so that other human beings can enjoy free rides.

And just for the benefit of my e-pal, 'DM', I will pinch one more quote from the Cafe Hayek which shows, despite 'DM's deep and abiding loathing, that Jefferson did write some bits of witty, sardonic wisdom:

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Well, I think that's enough petty larceny for one day so I suppose I had better get back to scribbling something of my own that is witty, wise or woeful - you choose!

Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Well, it's no use me posting swottish stuff tomorrow when you'll all have hangovers! And anyway, don't blame me because it's all that Malcolm Pollack's fault for pointing me in the direction of the MIT Technology Review, not, I must admit, my favourite reading over breakfast! Anyway, if my brain hurts then yours can do likewise so we'll start with Moore's Law - yeeees, quite, me neither! Like most of these swottish laws it is fairly easy to state even if the implications are not. In this case, Mr. Moore, a leading computer wizard reckoned that during the history of computing the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles roughly every two years. Here's a picture to help you grasp this less than exciting insight:

Well if that hasn't sent you back to sleep let me move quickly on to an application of Moore's diagram - and thinking - that is much more intriguing. In essence, suppose you had no knowledge of the history of computing but you knew Moore's Law then you could work backwards to find out when the first transistor was invented. Now suppose that you apply this type of regression to the evolution of life. If you can work out the rate of increase in complexity you could work backwards in time and reach the starting point of life on earth. Well, a couple of brain-boxes have done just that:

These guys argue that it’s possible to measure the complexity of life and the rate at which it has increased from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to more complex creatures such as worms, fish and finally mammals. That produces a clear exponential increase identical to that behind Moore’s Law although in this case the doubling time is 376 million years rather than two years.

Look, stop yawning, this is really exciting stuff because, you see, if you work backwards on that basis then life began 9.7 billion years ago, give or take a 2.7 billion years. But, you shout with amazement and disbelief (er, you did shout, didn't you?) the earth is only 4.5 billion years old so that means life began somewhere else! But if it did, then, as that ace swot, Enrico Fermi, pointedly asked in his famous paradox, where the hell is it? Well, of course, he didn't put it in quite those terms but it is a question demanding an answer from those who, eager to avoid an anthropological-centred universe, insist that life forms must exist throughout the cosmos. They may be right but so far we have seen absolutely no sign of it.

Well, that's enough swottery for me, I'm going back to bed because my head hurts!

Thursday, 26 December 2013

'SoD' ('Son of Duff' for the uninitiated) must have been in an introspective mood to write this. Perhaps he is a little harsh on Mr. Khordorkovsky who, after all, has served his time up 'the sharp end' of the interminable fight for liberality in Russia and who thus deserves some respite. Also, dwelling for too long on, or even worse, in, Russia tends to bring on an attack of the 'glums'! Anyway, he offered these thoughts to the blog and I am happy to publish them:

Under the spreading chestnut tree

Funny, I watched "Papillion" last night for the first time, just one of those classics that somehow slipped me by.

Then today I saw Khodorkovsky, the only real challenger Putin has had in recent years, emerge after a decade in a Russian prison, grey haired, gaunt, and with that "I'm broken, I'm not broken; I'm broken, I'm not broken; ..." oscillation in his facial expression and demeanor, flicking from one to the other, on / off like the electrodes were still attached, and I thought immediately of the white haired Steve McQueen standing on the cliff of his island prison trying to persuade his broken friend, Dustin Hoffman, to join him in a last desperate attempt to escape: yes, no; yes, no ...

And then Khodorkovsky said he wouldn't be standing against Putin, rather he would add his voice to the voices of the dissidents.

And I thought of the scene in 1984, where Winston Smith has finally departed the "Ministry of Love", room 101, and is reposing in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. And those corrupted lines from the poem:

And then we see the sneering meaning of the corrupted variant: When you sell a friend, family, or lover out to the state, and they sell you out, they die to you, and you to them. The state doesn't have to put a bullet in your brain, for all intents and purposes, the job is done already. You are free to go; you're alone, without friends, without power, and no longer a threat. You can even hang out in places where enemies of the state are reputed to hang out (like the Chestnut Tree Cafe), but the state won't bother you any more. No-one in there has any real friends, family, or lovers, so there's no powerbase you might build, so there's no threat.

Orwell consumes the original poem to fill out the picture without having to apply his own words: like the blacksmith, Smith soldiers bravely on with life; neutered, powerless, dead-alive, but grimly admirable. Whether you are the working class (or like the blacksmith, a metaphor for it), or a ministry clerk, or an oil oligarch, once you've sold out your friends, family, or lover to the state, that is your lot: A sad, mechanical, zombie class or person.

No doubt Khodorkovsky will go through the motions at the UN, even become a human rights celeb; Putin might even shake his hand sometime for a PR media opportunity.

No doubt what was once the working class of Europe will stumble out of bed day-by day for a life of daytime TV; fed, clothed and sheltered by the state, life taken care of without any need for friends, family, or lovers, or indeed any sort of social behaviour, and an appreciative photo-op "hug-a-hoody" or handshake from whichever social democrat politician is around.

I wonder who Khodorkovsky sold out? His wide powerbase, probably not the nicest bunch you'll ever meet, but the only challenge to Putin's absolute power that Russia actually had: dispersed and destroyed. I know not who they are, but I think I might know where to find them: propping up the bar in the Chestnut Tree Cafe with the Chavs.

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

A tad busy off and on today, just like you, I guess, so this will follow the form of my regular 'Sunday Rumbles' in which random burps thoughts will be expressed as and when they occur to me and in between the list of 'to dos' provided by the 'Memsahib'.

Post-mortem pandering: So the 'soppies' have had their way and a Queen's pardon has been offered to a dead 'queen' who broke the law of the land 60-odd years ago. Of course, this particular 'queen', Alan Turing, was central in the effort to break the German 'Enigma' code and thus helped us to win the war and that makes him the perfect symbol for the 'soppies' to wage their never-ending campaign for us to indulge in abject self-flagellation for the perceived sins of the past. Preposterous posturing, I call it!

Well, a man may hope, may he not? Well,Andrew Haldenby does in The Telegraph. Apparently, Ed 'Milipede' has very quietly slipped out a policy paper entitled "Zero-based Review". The main thrust, I gather, is that the Labour party now believes that all public expenditure - that's 'all' as in no exceptions at all - must be justified down to the last pound. I'm not sure whether this 'revolutionary' policy (for the Labour party) was slipped out so surreptitiously because Ed didn't want the other Ed to know about it or whether he was trying not to let the real leader (perhaps 'owner' is a better word!) of the Labour party, 'Bruvver' McCluskey, find out. Of course, it won't last five minutes if they get into power but still, it's interesting that even in theory they are admitting that not all government spending is justified.

Joke of the Year: Actually, I missed the chance to put this in my 'Monday Funnies' slot yesterday probably because when you think about it it's not at all funny. Anyway, for what it's worth I give you - The Joke Of The Year: The England cricket team! Yeah, well, I did warn you it wasn't funny. Alas for them (not that I feel much pity) the whole team is now tarnished by the 'drama queen' flouncings of Graeme Swann. What a gutless, miserable specimen of so-called sporting manhood - all mouth and nowt else - as they say 'ooop north'!

Good riddance to (very) bad rubbish: As a rule of thumb you would never want your sister to marry an MP. That is unfortunate for the (very) tiny minority of MPs who do their best to live up to their parliamentary titles as 'Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen'. However, the wisdom of the rule is confirmed by the 'ex-Honourable Gentlemen - not', Denis MacShane - I was tempted to try a pathetic jest by calling him 'MacShame' but instantly realised that he doesn't possess any! He always came across in his public interviews and appearances as a smooth-talking smart-arse. I do hope he doesn't try to pull his superiority 'schtik' with 'Big Bubba' in D-wing who has a way of, er, cutting people down to size! Of course, his enforced absence means that MacShane's current lady friend, Vicky Price (Huhne), is now free and available but given her proximity to men who end up in the slammer who, in his right mind, would take her on?

Why am I not surprised? There is a report in today's Mail, although I can't find a link, claiming that there was one particular regiment which did not take part in the famous Christmas truce in 1914. Needless to say, it was the first Battalion of the Cameronians whose grumpy ranks were filled, and I trust my e-pal Jimmy is reading this, with men 'frae Glasgie'. A game of football in no-man's-land was offered by the Germans but flatly refused by the Cameronians who claimed, not unreasably, that they couldn't trust the Huns not least because they had been shooting at them for the last four months!

Fantasia: Slumped in Christmas Eve inertia - it's a sort of practice for tomorrow! - I watched Disney's Fantasia. It must be nearly 70 years ago when I first saw it and I'm not sure I remember any of it bar The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I'm also not sure what to make of it today. Frankly, I was rather bored in places and simply closed my eyes and listened. On the other hand, some of the imagery is sharp and witty, and given the 'easy-peasy' nature of cgi effects these days, I can only stand silent and doff my hat to the memory of those 'cartoonists'.

A fantastic idea! I have just woken up from 'Midsomer Murders' with a totally brilliant idea. Next year I will write the Xmas murder mystery to end all murder mysteries! Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple will find themselves alone on a desert Island. One of them will be murdered but, and this is the clincher, it will not be a mystery as to 'who dunnit?' but 'who copped it?' I know, darlings, a talent like mine is wasted on this blog!

Sunday, 22 December 2013

Regular readers will know that my e-pal, 'DM' (a.k.a. 'Dearieme'), suffers almost terminal grumpiness if anyone mentions 'American exceptionalism' and only a dram or three will calm him down! I must admit it has a similar effect on me because, of course, every country in the world claims to be exceptional and, logically-speaking, they are all quite correct. Even so, this notion of 'American exceptionalism' has become an idée fixe in the minds of many otherwise sensible Americans and so I was delighted to read over at The American Interest an essay on the subject by an historian called Walter A. McDougall - presumably of Scottish ancestry which will please 'DM' even more!

He explains in fascinating detail the origins of this myth which, if not in the detail then in the general evolution, closely resembles all those other myths which so many different nations cling to with such fervour. Perhaps the juiciest irony - which I just know will provide 'DM' with as much warm pleasure as it does me - is the fact that the main propogandists of this idea of 'American exceptionalism' were the Roman Catholic Church and the early Communist Party of America. That almost makes me want to whinny with pleasure!

I should add, before my other regular contributor, JK, rides out of the 'Arkie' hills with his Winchester.44 by his side, that my appreciation of Mr. McDougall's forensic dissection of this myth does not diminish in the slightest my admiration and liking for all ... most ... nearly most things American. The fact that he was able to demolish such a cherished idea without let or hindrance says much about the real America as opposed to the mythical America.

Saturday, 21 December 2013

When, via the good offices of A&L Daily, I was directed to an essay at NAUTILUS by Amir D. Aczel, a terrific maths swot from America, on the subject of co-incidence I thought I might learn something new and startling. Alas, the last clause of his final sentence summed up the impasse: the occurrence of such startling coincidences in everyday life may well remain a mystery. You can say that again! Still, at least he's honest and even if his conclusion is disappointing he does offer a mathematical framework within which you can place your personal 'co-incidence incident' in order to gain some perspective. He uses the analogy of attempting to draw an ace of spades from a full deck of cards where the chances, each and every time, are 1 in 52. In real life, of course, the chances of a co-incidence occurring seem to be infinetesimal because the 'deck of cards', that is, one's life, are huge. Mr. Aczel is right, I think, to stress the importance of psychology when attempting to gauge the apparent impossibility of co-incidence. Part of us simply does not wish to know that perhaps our 'co-incidence' wasn't actually quite so co-incidental after all! I am reminded of the opening to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in which our two eponymous heroes, speaking alternately, are tossing a coin:

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

(Pause)

Bet? Heads I win?

Again...

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Heads.

Whoops!

It must be indicative of something besides the redistribution of wealth.

Heads.

A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, for nothing else at least in the law of probability...

Heads.

Consider. One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within, um ... sub or supernatural forces. Discuss!

What?

Look at it this way. If six monkeys...

If six monkeys...

The law of averages, if I have got this right means ... that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air long enough ... they would land on their tails about as often as they wouldland on their...

Who would be a 'great man' and live a life in the certain knowledge that once dead your personal history and reputation will be picked and pecked at by rival crows? Well, it will not happen to me and for that alone I must say I treasure my total obscurity. However, I am provoked to these thoughts by an increasing scholorship in the life and character of the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, as exemplified by a review of Volume III of his Letters at nybooks.com by John Banville. I have come across Isaiah Berlin before, particularly when, some 30 years ago, I took an interest in philosophy. As a philosopher it seems to me that Berlin suffered through failing to write enough full-length books, instead confining his activities mainly to teaching undergraduates and writing innumerable essays which, in the highly literate world of 'high philosophy', opens you to the accusation of dilettantism. Thus, I have read more about him than from him! Even so, I was and still am immediately attracted to his version of liberty (or freedom, if you prefer) and his insight that these concepts might appear to be the same but actually mask great differences. In particular, I cherish (obviously) the very British concept of 'freedom' as being freedom from interference. That this concept is crumbling under the onslaught of 'positive freedom' which seeks to define exactly what your freedom is - and is not! - must have distressed the old man in his later years - he died in 1997. Who bears his standard today? I can only think of Roger Scruton but then I gave up my amateurish philosophy studies years ago when I realised that there was no 'killer' idea that would nail the rest. That, of course, Isaiah Berlin realised long ago.

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Even by my normal standards of obscurity that is an incomprehensible title but I promise you that it does have a meaning and an exceedingly important, and possibly crucial, meaning. As I write and you read, there is a battle raging and if its ferocity is so far confined only to "words, words, words" there is a distinct possibility that at some time in the near future it will evolve into rockets, missiles and even nuclear weapons. The 'battle' currently being waged is amongst American strategists and I will try and summarise the debate in so far as an ex-corporal understands it. However, I would urge those of you interested enough to read the full essays I link to at the end of this post.

ASB stands for AirSeaBattle and it sums up the current thinking at the Pentagon as to how they should cope with growing Chinese ambitions increasingly matched by growing military capability. The thinking is that the US needs to integrate its strategic forces, that is, missiles and electronics and all the various platforms that support them, into one combined force capable of penetrating the Chinese continent and destroying their C3 capability, that is, Command, Control, Communications. This force would not include nuclear capabilities which would be held back for use only as a second-strike possibility. The thinking is that the Chinese know they are utterly out-nucleared and in any exchange they would be obliterated and thus they would be extremely unlikey ever to use such weapons. This ASB strategy is essentially offensive, by which I do not imply that it would make the Americans the first-strike aggressors but only that if war breaks out then they would seek to take the initiative - and the fight - to the enemy. By and large, forcing your enemy to fight on your terms is thought highly desirable in operational circles!

A2/D2 stands for Anti-Access/Area Denial and, in military philosophy terms, it is a defensive strategy, in other words, the polar opposite to ABS. Proponents of this strategy suggest a mutual (if possible) agreement between the USA and the countries who, so to speak, 'border' with China across the east and south China seas; so that would include Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. The idea would be that in the event of war, access to those waters would be denied to the Chinese. The American submarine fleet, in particular, would be hugely increased in size and capability as a main enforcer of this restricted use. The mainpoint is that this strategy would deliberately avoid any penetration of Chinese land, sea or air space and thus lower enormously the risk of nuclear escalation. In fact, the one thing likely to provoke the Chinese to first use of their nuclear option would be any incoming threat, real or imagined, to to its existence.

Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice! However, I would urge you to read these links as an introduction. It's a grim subject but at least some people are trying to think ahead. Whether such thinking penetrates the Pentagon, let alone the White House remains a moot point.

Saturday, 30 November 2013

You will have noted, I'm sure, the past tense in my title because I fear that since the stern, testing days of 1623, Boston has fallen under the wheels spell of the Democrat party and today its city leaders would not have the intelligence of their predecessors, as spelled out by Donald Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek in a letter to the NYT:

This historical experience contains a lesson for health care. The problems highlighted in your report – a surge in health-care consumption along with a shortage of health-care resources – is a predictable result of turning health care into a common-property resource. Consumers have fewer incentives to consume it wisely while physicians and other health-care providers have fewer incentives to supply it in quantities sufficient to meet all of the demands for their services.

It sounds noble to many modern ears that health care should be supplied as a ‘right.’ It likewise sounded noble to the Pilgrims’ ears that food should be supplied as a ‘right.’ But noble intentions are no substitute for proper economic incentives. Just as the Pilgrims’ experiment with supplying food as a ‘right’ failed, so, too, will our effort to supply health care as a ‘right’ fail.

Whatever happened on both sides of the pond between 1623 and now? Bloody socialism, that's what!

Thursday, 28 November 2013

There is such a pleasure in refinding an old friend. No, no, not a person, can't be doing with them, simply too, too irritating, I mean a book! I read literally tons of books but only a very few of them stick in the memory but those that do are with me for life. Well, they would be if I didn't move house so often and some how misplace them, or if 'SoD' didn't keep nicking them - he denies all charges vehemently but 'I hae me doots!' Anyway, it's 'friends re-united' here at 'Chateaux Duff' and all courtesy of Amazon who provided me with a slightly scruffy but perfectly adequate second-hand edition of A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staffby the late Col. T. N. Dupuy, formerly of the US Army.

Being something of a masochist I am always rather happy when I read a book which makes me exceedingly uncomfortable as it blows away several of my dearly-held convictions and I realise what a prat I have been! Also, it serves the very useful purpose of softening my usually fierce opinions on other matters about which, I suspect, it will only take one well-written and researched book to knock them cold.

Col. Dupuy's prologue was enough to blow away a couple of examples of prejudicial thinking on my part. For example, until I first read his book (several years ago) I had assumed that the fighting qualities of the allied troops in WWII were roughly equal to those of the Germans and that they lost mainly because of Russian and American weight of men and materials:

There were substantial combat effectiveness differences within national contingents - British, American and German - but the overall comparisons were quite constant. On the average, a force of 100 Germans was the combat equivalent of 120 Americans or 120 British troops. Further refinements in the model began to reveal that in terms of casualties the differential was even greater, with German soldiers on the average inflicting three casualties on the Allies for every two they incurred. This relationship - a 20% combat effectiveness superiority, and a 3-to-2 casualty-inflicting superiority - was found to be still in effect during the 1944 fighting in Normandy and France, and as late a December 1944, at the time of the Germans' Ardennes offensive.

One of the other myths blown away by Col. Dupuy was the dearly-held notion that the German soldier was an unthinking, semi-automatum who did nothing without orders but when given them followed them to the last letter. Again, completely and utterly wrong, and his history of the Prussian (and then German) General Staff explains exactly how wrong that was and why. A superb book and, for me, a dear, old friend refound!

Thursday, 21 November 2013

The greatest allies the Republican party has today are President Obama and his Democrat party! The so-called 'Obamacare' project has crash landed and I sense that the worst is yet to come. In any event, the American people now have a rock-hard example to confirm their suspicion that governments are incapable of actually organising a piss up in a brewery! Now is the chance, one would think, for a Republican party, united behind a philosophy of smaller government, to stand together at the forthcoming hustings and sweep the board. Fat chance!

As Jeffrey Lord spells out in The American Spectator, the Republicans are split down the middle! Actually, I'm not sure if the split is actually in the middle, it is more a split between the ordinary 'Joe Does' who mostly loathe government and the political apparatchiks who love it. You can understand why politicians of all colours love government because it is through government that they can exert their power. For the average politician, the whole game, the whole wretched business of smarming to 'the folks', attending endless numbers of tedious 'chicken suppers', wheedling money out of donars, kissing babies and media arseholes, is all worth it for that chance to gain office and wield power! So, it is going to be a hard job to find a politician who not only does not wish to wield power but positively strives to relinquish as much of it as possible. Such people are as rare as hens' teeth which is why we, on both sides of the pond, have only only enjoyed one Ronald Reagan and one Margaret Thatcher.

Jeffrey Lord is a brave man because in his article he takes on no less an opponent than 'The Kraut', than whom . . . etc, etc! 'The Kraut' argues that there is no split in the Republican party on matters of principle only of tactics, as he said on TV:

I think this whole thing [a split in the Republican party] is very much blown up in the liberal media…. The difference between the hard right and moderates is really one over tactics rather than over ideology and objectives…. On objectives you tell me what is the fundamental difference between the so-called moderates and radicals. I don’t see it. We all agree on limited government, we all agree on restoration of individual rights, we all agree on liberty being the central ideal, we all agree on the restoration of individual responsibility and initiative… where’s the big difference?... This is ginned up by a lot of players for a lot of self-interested reasons…. Cool this a little bit by looking rationally at what are the real differences… and they are tactical.

Jeffrey Lord absolutely disagrees and in doing so actually quotes the late, and very much under-estimated, Sir Keith Joseph:

When you ask “where’s the big difference?” I would suggest it is right there with moderates whose view of the federal government and its role is entirely different from that of the party’s conservative base.

As has been discussed here before this difference was well expressed by Margaret Thatcher’s longtime adviser, the late Sir Keith Joseph. Joseph believed that the internal dynamics of politics continually ratcheted left — and that British Conservatives had simply acceded to what was called socialist ratcheting. To be a Conservative Prime Minister was to simply manage the leftward, socialist ratchets of the last Labour government, never to change course. The reason for Thatcher’s success — and Reagan’s in America — was precisely because they did not go along with the leftward socialist ratcheting and sought to ratchet rightward. To go completely in the other direction.

That seems to me to be absolutely spot on. And as Mr. Lord also reminds us, both these 'counter-revolutionary' leaders were forced to struggle against their own parties, the majority of whom simply could not bring themselves to diminish in any way their own power.

If 'Obamacare' brings down the Democrat party then the Republicans need to be aware of the danger of collateral damage. As Americans survey the wreckage, more and more of them will demand to know what solution the Republicans can offer. At that point the brown stuff will hit the Republican fan - so be ready to duck!

Monday, 18 November 2013

It was only a few weeks ago that I reported the very welcome return of Tim Newman to his always interesting blog, White Sun of the Desert. Being something of a 'derring-do' oil man, always up at the sharp end of the drill-bit in some hell-hole or other, his occasional absences were understandable, but now he seems to have more of a back-office role in the very much more civilised and salubrious country of Australia. Anyway, once again I am recommending as strongly as possible that you take time to read a recent post of his which might be retitled "Never give a sucker an even break!" It is absolutely excellent - just click here and go read!

Sunday, 17 November 2013

The curvacious Mr. Kuznets: No, I hadn't heard of him either but he is another of those economic swots, like Prof. Laffer, who are able to dig deeply into what is in fact commonsense and then produce very learn-ed papers explaining why it is correct. Thus, in considering some of the problems facing China like their economic inequality then, just like the original 'Laffer curve', Mr. Kuznets produces a neat diagram which, considering that it more or less describes what has happened in a host of countries since the British industrial revolution, can't have been that difficult to do. As countries industrialise economic inequality grows but at a certain point it begins to fall, probably, I guess, as a result of that pesky 'trickle down effect' so hated by the socialists.

I am grateful to Timmy for offering a variation on this theme, as well as introducing me to Mr. Kuznets, in which he shows that one of the truly bad effects of industrialisation is a huge increase in truly nasty polution but that, too, follows the Kuznets curve and eventually decreases. I have absolutely no doubt that China will follow the curve in time.

The non-democratic Democratparty: I provide this link mainly for the benefit of my American friends. Look upon it as a resupply of ammo should you find yourself in a fierce fire-fight with some Lefty Democrat:

Look out, here comes Kennedy-mania! Next Friday is the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy's assassination so expect a deluge of historical 'post hoc' memoires and aanalyses. I think it is now fairly clear that as a man he was an A1 shit of the first order but that seems to have been a family trait, and anyway, being a rascal has never been a bar to success as a politician - one thinks, even fondly, of Talleyrand and Bismarck. But these were men possessed of formidable political acumen, something that all the Kennedy's seemed to lack, unsurprisingly given that their sole aim was the enrichment in power and money of the Kennedy clan. And, yes, I fell for the BS at the time but I was young and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! I notice from one of the links below that Obama intends to visit the Kennedy grave - how eminently suitable!

America plays with nuclear matches: I think, when the history books are written, assuming there are any after a possible nuclear war in the middle east, President Obama, whose behaviour on the international stage can only be described as childish, petulant and irrational, will be seen as the political dilletante that he is. Brought up and developed, as he was, under the sort of Left-wing politik that can only be described in sentences short enough to fit on a protest banner, he is proving to be hopeless at foreign affairs. Perhaps his own innate anti-Americanism plays some part in it. As a result of his so-called diplomacy in the middle east it now looks as though the impossible might happen with Israel climbing into bed with the Saudis. Both, for similar reasons, are determined not to allow the Iranians to develop the bomb. According to the Times of Israel, Saudi Arabia is considering the possibility of offering practical aid to the Israelis in the form of staging posts for attack aircraft in the event that Netanyahu decides to strike. 'Whodathunkit'?

Vintage Mark Steyn: For my money, which ain't worth much, I admit, Mark Steyn is still the wittiest, sharpest commentator on American affairs that I have come across. Here is a taster from his latest column on the eccentric and ego-centric capers of King George III Barry Obama:

On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.

This isn't government, this is just the latest production from the 'Carry On' franchise, minus the appalling jokes, not because the White House gags are better but because they haven't got any at all! Someone should feed King Barry with, perhaps the greatest gag of all from the 'Carry On' films:

All I'm thinking is 'hurry up, dear!' This just arrived in my In-box because I have signed up to receive quotations from the 'In the Pursuit of Copiousness' site. Some are droll, some are quirky, some are wise and some revelatory. I leave you to decide into which category this fits:

"When a man opens the car door for his wife, he is doing far more than just getting the door open. It is not a matter of utility. It is not a question of pragmatics. Granted, we could save energy all around if both individuals opened their own doors. But he is making a statement in addition to getting the door open. He is disciplining his own heart and soul, which need it, and he is honoring his wife, who is glorified by it. The role of the man here, if we may speak this way, is not just to get the door open. His central role is the liturgical act of saying that women everywhere should be held in honor by men, and that he adds his amen to this, as everyone in the parking lot at Costco can now see."

Thursday, 14 November 2013

In a post down belowI ventured into the dangerous and, for me, unchartered waters of the case of Marine 'A' recently found guilty of executing a Taliban fighter in cold blood. That very brief summary of what was, perhaps, in reality a much more muddled and untidy incident is just the synopsis of what I gathered from the media. I do not wish to be entangled with the particulars of that case, instead I want to discuss the broader matters of principle which arise from it. In particular, my e-pal, 'Able', raises some contradictory points - yes, I know, bloody cheek, contradicting ME! - which require a longer response than is suitable for a comments thread.

For a start, I think we have both wandered too far into the legal intricacies of the guiding spirit behind the Geneva Convention and all the other international agreements which attempt to guide civilised behaviour in the very uncivilised business of making war. It is not, I think, a question of whether paragraph 6, sub-paragraph b., does or does not specify this or that particular. It is necessary for soldiers to think at a deeper level - and if they find that difficult it is for their commanders to do their thinking for them and instil the results into their soldiers' minds and discipline.

Surely the basis for thinking on moral issues must be Christianity - and I write that as confirmed agnostic who has no views either way on the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus Christ. However, it is the bedrock of western civilisation as it has evolved over the past two millennia. It is, of course, a creed or a philosophy "more honoured in the breech than the observance" but that does not detract from its moral power. In fact, I would rate it highly as a guide not just for its moral power but for its acute intelligence! The undoubted fact that it is diminishing in influence is, I think, a disaster but that is another story.

The very essence of its teaching in regard to civil behaviour is that human life is always and forever - precious! I am not sure, as some Christian pacifists are, that it forbids the taking of life under any circumstances, and that is certainly not what a pro-capital punishment advocate like me believes. However, I do put the emphasis on the word "precious", in other words, I do think the circumstances under which human beings will be killed requires very careful consideration.

(At this point, alas, I must pause because I am, so to speak, under starter's orders to take the 'Memsahib' out for shopping and lunch. I will return later this afternoon and try and finish this post. I leave it up in this unfinished state to give you all time to marshal your thoughts.)

Right, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, not the sanctity of human life because that is a concept too far for me but its inherent and precious value. It is a variation on the same argument I use when arguing against abortion, that is, although the entity is just a bunch of pulsating cells, nevertheless, it is its potentiality which is valuable. I repeat, I am not against the taking of human life but it must be done in certain specific situations which, I would add, does not include a casual shot in the head of an unarmed and wounded opponent in a dusty field in Afghanistan.

To bring the argument back to the strictly military, I would also like to raise the ideal of 'The Warrior Code' which is a folorn and tattered concept these days when, as I pointed out a few posts back, you can kill people a zillion miles away whilst sitting at your desk in front of a computer. Even so, I believe that the remnants of a Warrior Code do still exist and it is the duty of officers in a 'Christian' country to impress their troops with it. The essence of it is not to 'love thine enemy' but 'respect thine enemy'. A glaring example of where this lack of a Warrior Code was evident was in Vietnam where the American troops had a variety of insulting epithets with which they dismissed their Viet Cong opponents - who then went on to beat them hands down! Similar language has been used by British troops in describing their Afghani opponents and they, too, were thrashed!

Of course, the world is filled with very different societies, albeit, they are all peopled with human beings despite their habits and beliefs being the very opposite of what a Christian-based army would think right and proper. (To be strictly accurate, of course, I am referring to a modern Christian-based army of today. Go back a few centuries and their equivalents would not seem out of place with the worst of the worst!) From everything I have seen and heard concerning the Afghani warriors (I use the word deliberately) they are incredibly hardy, tough, ruthless, cruel, determined and brave beyond words. If our soldiers were imbued with the concept of the Warrior Code they, or at least some of them, would not despise their foes but respect them for their courage even as they killed them in combat. The fact that the enemy does not share the Warrior Code is neither here nor there - we fight on our terms, they fight on theirs!

Before I began this post this morning I listened to a fascinating discussion on Radio 4 on the subject of Shakespeare's last solo play, The Tempest. Perhaps one of the most mysterious characters he invented was the half-, sub-, or maybe fully, human occupant of the mysterious island, Caliban. It was interesting to hear how directors over the centuries have altered their views on how Caliban should be portrayed. In earlier times he was considered half-man, half-monster. Today, groaning under their (supposed!) guilt for colonial crimes of the past, directors have Caliban played as a native human who stands for downtrodden, exploited slavery. I'm not convinced by that but at least he is treated as human and it is noteworthy that Prospero, who was the intended victim of a murder plot by Caliban and his cronies, does not have him executed. Perhaps another piece of Shakespeare sums it up best:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath: it is twice blest;It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:'Tis mightiest in the mightiest:

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Richard North makes a considered point this morning which, on the face of it, seems right but which, alas, I think fails on closer scrutiny. He is concerned with the fate of Marine 'A' who, apparently, shot dead an injured Taliban soldier. It appeared to be - and here I emphasise that I am not in full possession of all the facts - to be a fairly cold-blooded action. By that, I mean that the shooting did not take place in the heat of battle because there was some calm discussion between him and his fellow marines before he pulled the trigger. I'm not saying he wasn't emotional because, according to reports (which I had never heard reported before), the Taliban were in the habit of hanging body parts of British soldiers from trees as a sort of triumphant propaganda message. Anyway, there is absolutely no doubt that Marine 'A' pulled the trigger. He has now been found guilty of murder and is due for sentencing this week. Various media outlets have been insisting that he should receive the severest sentence. So far, I have only seen or read one man pleading for a lenient sentence and that was Col. Tim Collins who has an active service record that demands respect for his views which I urge you to read.

Richard North dismisses the outcry over Marine 'A's action reminding us, correctly, alas, that murder of enemy wounded "has been a feature of every major war in which British soldiers have served". In his view, if this sort of thing is going to be the subject of legal action in British courts then greater care should be taken to hide the evidence! However, he then goes on to make a wider point:

But, when it comes to high-ranking soldiers and the rule of law, such as the duty of care when it comes to sending out troops in substandard vehicles, we see the same newspaper [The Telegraph] fielding Charles Moore to tell us that, "If there is a risk of litigation and even prosecution, how can commanders make proper decisions on the ever-changing battlefield?"

Methinks we're seeing a little hypocrisy here. Certainly, "commanders" can't have it both ways.
If Her Majesty's Armed Forces are held to have a duty to uphold the rule of law, then they cannot pick and choose which laws are upheld. The law should be the law, and where senior officers needlessly expose the troops in their charge to unnecessary danger, then they too should be held to account for their actions in a court of law.

What's sauce for the soldier, one might say, is sauce for the commander.

Here, I think, Richard North is referring mainly (but not exclusively) to the so-called 'snatch Landrovers', thin-skinned and unprotected vehicles, which were developed for operations in urban Ulster but which were deployed in Afghanistan with horrifying results, not the least being, presumably, the providing of even more British body parts for the enemy! He believes that if the likes of Marine 'A' is to stand trial then so, too, should sundry Brigadiers and Generals for failing in their 'duty of care' to their own troops. Alas, in an ideal world, maybe! But in the real world, in real war, the decision-making process is too diffuse ever to allow the pointing of fingers at any one particular officer. You only have to contemplate for a few moments the less-than-grand history of British army cock-ups which even the historians afterwards are divided over whom to blame.

Sunday, 10 November 2013

NO, we shall NOT remember them: What the vast majority of us will do today is buy a poppy when the tin is shaken under our nose, perhaps briefly think of a long-dead relative we never really knew because we were too young when he was around, switch channels rapidly when we find our usual Sunday morning programmes filled with scenes from the Cenotaph and then get off down the pub to watch the Arsenal play Man United on the 'telly'. Not, mind you, that I think this is wrong; it is, so to speak, 'in the way of things'. To go too far in the opposite direction and to have state encouragement for a sort of hysterical, orchestrated, national 'wail-in' would be positively North Korean!

"Blow, wind and crack your cheeks": Thus, shouted that mad, stupid but brave, old man, Lear, as he waved his puny fists at a pitiless cosmos. I doubt many of the pitiable people in south east Asia had time for that as they struggled to survive the hurricane/tornado that 'blasted their particular heath'. Still, as the political saying goes, it's an ill-emergency that doesn't blow someone something good and the Warm Greenie Slimes are already at it, according M' Lord 'Bishop' Hill:

Jamie Henn of 350.org calls the storm a wake-up call for the upcoming UN climate summit. Simon Redfern in the Mirror says we should expect more such storms in future.

Remarkably, the two periods of most frequent typhoon strikes in Guangdong (AD 1660–1680, 1850–1880) coincide with two of the coldest and driest periods in northern and central China during the Little Ice Age.

Barroso gains an 'F' in European history: And so the President of the European Commission demonstrates his ignorance of European and Churchillian history by suggesting that Churchill's words in 1948 indicated the great man's wish for Britain to be part of a new, united Europe. Oddly enough, I had just passed that particular episode in Richard Holmes's superb single-volume biography of Churchill and in it he makes clear that whilst Churchill wanted Europe to coalesce in a union of sovereign states he had no intention that Britain should join it. The normally acerbic Richard North is surprisingly restrained in pointing this out to 'President' Barroso, giving him the equivalent of fifty lines instead of sending him to the headmaster for six of the best!

Corky again - and again: I found 'Corky Again' some time ago but in my stumble-thumb way I lost him whilst tidying up my 'favourites' folder - see, as I never stop telling the 'Memsahib' when she moans about the state of my garret, too much tidying is a disaster in the making! Anyway, I re-found (is that a word?) 'Corky Again' just recently and his current post is worth a read if you are feeling in a philosophical mood today. 'Corky' is that rarity, a man who can write on the complexities of philosophy in plain English.

Bits and bobs: That's 'bobs' as in the old English expression for a shilling piece. The 'bits' is the English expression for a new currency called 'BitCoin'. This 'currency' exists only in the imagination, or the internet, as some people call it! Even so, this 'figment of someone's imagination' has risen to $325 which is enough to give me pause. I cannot explain it to you but you may visit HERE and HERE and the writers concerned will partially lift the veil. As far as I am concerned the main attraction of 'BitCoin' is that it operates completely outside the control of any government - for the moment, anyway!

Talking of old wars: Which I was doing in my opening 'rumble', I have finally got round to starting a book on another old and famous (infamous, perhaps?) war about which I know very little - The American Civil War by the late John Keegan. I only read the Introduction and before I even reached Chaper One I was already groaning in anguish. Just like WWI and WWII, there was an awful inevitability about it. Those three usual rascals were involved - Principle, Politics and Money! Nothing was going to solve the impasse except that great leveller - War. "Oh, the pity of it!"

An American takes an outside look at America:

"O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as ithers see us!" Thus, spake 'Rabbie' Burns over 200 years ago and that, more or less is what Thomas L Friedman is begging his fellow Americans to pray for. He quotes another American observer who like him is a frequent visitor to Singapore and who recognised that "you know that all the modernity and prosperity you see here [in Singapore] is not based on natural resources but on a natural resourcefulness". That used to be the proud boast of the USA but as Friedman points out, "[H]ow could the people who gave us Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, HP and Google not be able to build a workable health care website? I know it had 5 million users, but there are 48 million Indonesians on Facebook!" Worth reading!

NEW COMMENT POLICY: Dealing with this spam attack is tiresome! I cut down the time interval at which I would accept comments from 6 months to one month but they still managed to sneak them into posts which were about three weeks old so now I have stopped accepting comments after two weeks! So, if you have anything to say, say it quick! If that works and the spams fall off I will extend the 'opening hours', as it were, back to where they were. I have asked TypePad if it is possible for commenters to request that they be placed on an 'approved list' so that the spams can be stopped at source. I await an answer. If it is negative then I might adopt the system used by others of not printing comments until I have approved them - which I am reluctant to do because it rather spoils the sponteneity. Anyway, for the moment, two weeks and then the comments on any particular post will close.